MemoryError: out of memory Python 2.1.3 on Windows 2000

[Andrew MacIntyre]

On Thu, 27 Aug 2003, Andy Rechenberg wrote:

> Is this issue related to running python 2.1.3 on Windows 2000?  Is
> there anyway I can fix this problem so that python.exe will use more
> than 122MB of RAM (the server has 4GB)?

I would hazard a guess that what you are really seeing is a heap
fragmentation issue.  This was particularly prevalent on Win9x, and I had
been under the impression that the situation was much less severe on Win2k
and later.

There was at least one fix (that I recall anyway) applied to the 2.2.x
branch to use aggressive overallocation strategies to reduce the impact of
this fragmentation.

PyMalloc in 2.3 goes a long way to isolating Python from oddities in the
host's malloc() implementation.

You might be able to get an indication of whether this is the problem
you're seeing by running the longexp regression test - although on a
machine with 4GB of RAM you might have to bump the expression length up to
100,000, maybe 150,000.

Contact me off-list if you want more detail.

Regards,
Andrew.

--
Andrew I MacIntyre                     "These thoughts are mine alone..."
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