[comp.emacs] Probs w/install on a tahoe

dsill@NSWC-OAS.ARPA.UUCP (04/07/87)

A while back I posted a message about being unable to make 18.39 on a
CCI Power 6 (tahoe).  One person replied that he was having problems
until he got a new version of the OS and C compiler.  Another person
posted a message on info-tahoe saying that 18.41 now works on tahoes.
Hooray, I thought, and proceeded to ftp 18.41.  Same problem.

from emacs PROBLEMS file:
>* Fatal signal in the command  temacs -l loadup inc dump
>
>This command is the final stage of building Emacs.  It is run by the
>Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
>
>It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
>space available on the machine.

For the benefit of those of us who haven't got years of UNIX under our
belts, how does one determine how much swapping space is available?
I asked around and was told to look at /etc/disktab.  I was also told
that two a-sized partitions were used for swapping.  This is what I found
in disktab:

xfd|Xfd|XFD|340 Mb FSD:\
        :ty=winchester:ns#16:nt#24:nc#711:rm#3600:\
        :pa#20352:ba#8192:fa#1024:\

>On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
>subroutine `alloca'.  Verify that `alloca' works right, even
>for large blocks (many pages).

Again, for those of us who aren't yet wizards, how can I verify that alloca
is working right?  (Even though I'm not on a 680x0 this could still be the
problem.)   Perhaps a test program could be included as part of the emacs
distribution, or available separately.  It could save someone the hassle of
ftp'ing the entire distribution just to find out they can't use it.

Any insights would be appreciated.

-Dave Sill
 dsill@nswc-oas.arpa