smithw@yvax.byu.edu (09/22/89)
I have some interesting problems with mathematica to report. I'd be
interested to hear from anyone who has found others. My machine is
the 8 MB od only version. I've noticed problems with memory before
when running mathematica. Today I tried finding the inverse of a
certain symbolic matrix. I watched the memory with ps -xva. The program
seems to hang onto disk space once it is used for swap and never lets go.
When the thing really got going, it wouldn't even let me kill it with
the skull and crossbones. I got some failure panel for the abattoir.
The swapfile increased in size to about 32 MB and when I was finally able
to kill the process from shell it kept the space anyway (not quite the
definition of swap is it? But wait...) I tried to copy some of the ps
output to writenow but there was not enough space to open it(wn). I tried
edit, but not enough space to save the file. I logged out. Then back
in to get a message to the effect that my disk space was very low.
The doc tried to do its thing opening term, shell and wn but not enough
space. I logged out and turned the machine off. When I got back up,
the doc was empty except for the next block at the top...It seems to me
this is a very LARGE bug that makes it well nigh immpossible to use
mathematica for anything significant. Any hope of fixing it soon?
Are you listening NeXT?? And yes I did repeat this with the same results on
another cube. HELP! I need this thing to do symbolic stuff. It doesn't
even have to do it very fast...just correctly. How about porting
MAPLE to the cube?? I'm stuck with the cube for a while since I had
to do some ranting to get one in the first place. Come on guys,
make me happy...just a little bit?? Oh yeah, mathematica has some other
bugs. The Eigensystem command fails on most anything you want to try...
For instance the matrix {{1,2,3},{a,0,0},{1,2,3}}. Gee, this one I
can do by hand in a few minutes...HHHHEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPP!!!!!!!
Bill Smith
smithw@yvax.byu.eduavie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian) (09/23/89)
In article <811smithw@yvax.byu.edu> smithw@yvax.byu.edu writes: > > I have some interesting problems with mathematica to report. I'd be >interested to hear from anyone who has found others. My machine is >the 8 MB od only version. I've noticed problems with memory before >when running mathematica. Today I tried finding the inverse of a >certain symbolic matrix. I watched the memory with ps -xva. The program >seems to hang onto disk space once it is used for swap and never lets go. >When the thing really got going, it wouldn't even let me kill it with >the skull and crossbones. I got some failure panel for the abattoir. >The swapfile increased in size to about 32 MB and when I was finally able >to kill the process from shell it kept the space anyway (not quite the >definition of swap is it? But wait...) You are running into a problem where you just plain need more disk space due to the size of Mathematica. If you need to perform Mathematica computations that use that much memory, then you should free up space on your disk. To do this, look at the printed release notes, which suggest several files/directories that you may want to remove (e.g., TeX, documentation, ...). Also, the operating system is capable of shrinking the swapfile. It will shrink the size of the swapfile to correspond to the maximum page left in the swapfile. Unfortunately, what often happens is that a large program will extend the swapfile to size n, another long lived background process will cause a new page to be swapped to n+1, the original large program will exit, but the swapfile will remain at size n+1 because it is the largest. Although the space freed in the middle of the file will be reused, the fact of the matter is that the file is still large. The sure fire way to reclaim the swap space is to reboot the system, which truncates the swapfile to a predetermined size (16 meg, I believe). -- Avadis Tevanian, Jr. (Avie) Manager, Systems Software NeXT, Inc. avie@cs.cmu.edu or avie@NeXT.com
songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer) (01/16/91)
Hi,
I just acquired a copy of the Second Edition Mathematica
book by Wolfram. I'm running NeXT OS1.0. The Mathematica kernel
version is 1.2 as is the Front end. My question is this: I've looked
in the book and there is some MAJOR functionality described in the
book, that is not supported in my version. Is there an upgrade I can
get somewhere? Am I going to have to wait for 2.0? Thanks!
-Chrissmithw@hamblin.math.byu.edu (Dr. William V. Smith) (05/28/91)
Some of you may be interested in the latest from Wolfram about
Mathematica (for NeXT) 2.0. It looks like it will ship
(keep those fingers crossed!) in mid-June. So if you bug
your NeXT rep you might get a copy by July - NeXT is responsible
for all academic upgrades to 2.0 Mathematica (i.e. distribution).
-Bill
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