Subj : OS/2 application stack space
To   : Sean Dennis
From : Peter Knapper
Date : Fri Nov 29 2002 06:51 pm

Hi Sean,

 SD> I'm thinking OS/2 is giving me signs that I may be 
 SD> pushing it too hard... I have a 850Mhz Athlon 
 SD> Thunderbird-powered computer for my BBS with 96MB RAM 
 SD> and two hard drives (OS/2 resides on a 2GB HD and the 
 SD> BBS lives on a 20GB HD).  I'm running Maximus/2 v3.01 
 SD> with the Y2K fixes.

As a comparison, I have a Celeron 700 with 64Mb, 10GB HD, running Warp 4 FP9 
with Binkley/2 2.60, Maximus & Squish 3.01 + Y2k, 2 x PSTN lines, BinkD, DNS, 
NTP/SNTP server, and this machine runs for a month before I do a regular 
shutdown/restart. It rarely drops below 24MB memory free, so its not short of 
resources. Its not used for anything else other than the BBS and has been a 
pretty stable box since it was built (about 18 months ago). Currently its 
running 15 Tasks, 39 Processes and 132 threads, but things are quiet as I type.

 SD> Max will suddenly just drop carrier on them 

If Max drops carrier, then the Max log tells you WHY it did this. If you are 
not seeing any Max messages in the log, then something else is causing the loss 
of carrier.

 SD> as well as crash when looking at the Fidonet message area list (I 
 SD> carry the entire Fido backbone, about 430+ echoes).

If Max crasshes on attempting to access a Message area, then look for soe sort 
of message area corruption, or a HD Partition corruption, or an HD issue of 
some sort. Run SQFIXP over all areas and see what that reports. 

Finally, (assuming HPFS on all partitions) after doing EVERYTHING else possible 
first because it can take a heck of a LONG time to complete (like over an 
hour!!!) on LARGE partitions, run a CHKDSK /F:3 on your message base drive, 
then all other drives. This mihght dig up a lot of old files, but carefuly 
check what it finds. This can be a useful in sight into an HD problem that 
things are getting bad somewhere.

 SD> What I'm thinking is that OS/2 may be running out of 
 SD> room and simply acting strangely.  

Is your SWAP file increasing in size, or do you have swapping turned OFF????

 SD> I do have the OS/2 
 SD> memory kludge in my BIOS turned OFF (I believe so-I 
 SD> can't reboot the machine right now to find out).

I have never needed that, its always seen the full memory on my machines 
without using it.

 SD> I have 192MB RAM in my other machine that I use 
 SD> heavily.  I may switch the RAM from that one over to 
 SD> this computer to see if that would help.

It is remotely possible you __MIGHT__ have a memory problem that OS/2 is runing 
into with rarely used memory. I cursed the day they took parity memory out of 
the PC world, the BIOS check is NOT a 100% guarantee. Try an external memory 
checking program and see if it finds anything.

Side track here... I ran into my first real Memory problem in a LONG time about 
4 weeks ago when I upgraded an OS/2 machine from 128MB to 512MB. The upgrade 
was fine, but after about 12 hours of error free runing it trapped. The restart 
POST was fine, however CHKDSK found all sorts of corrupt files and just trapped 
again. Eventually, when I backed out to my orignal 128MB, everything was fine, 
no corrupt HD or anything!!!. It turns out the Motherboard chipset couldn't run 
a full 512MB (2 x 256K sticks) reliably (apparently a known issue with this 
particular Chipset), however the machine has been running fine on 384Kb ever 
since I discovered the problem.

 SD> If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'd really appreciate the help.

Thats about all so far, see how that goes.

Cheers............pk.


--- Maximus/2 3.01
 * Origin: Another Good Point About OS/2 (3:772/1.10)

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