Memory allocation problem with python 2.4.3

[Brice-Olivier Demory]

Hi,

I'm encountering an odd problem while running a python script which
calls a C program
called 'st_time' :

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "ccdd.py", line 177, in ?
    answer=proc_request(conn,addr,request)                      # proc
the
request
  File "ccdd.py", line 69, in proc_request
    answer = '1&%s'%(ccd.exec_function(fct,arg))
  File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 204, in
exec_function
    return apply(self.funcs[name],args)
  File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 731, in
mpose
    answer = self.download()
  File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 1152,
in download
   st = libastro.st_time(ut,LON)
  File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libastro.py", line 169,
in st_time
   raise e
OSError: [Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory

This error is far from appearing each time I invoke st_time. To debug
this problem,
a friend of mine tried to get memory information as soon as this error
is raised. Here, it
returns :

MemTotal:       774856 kB
 MemFree:         22952 kB
 Buffers:          3656 kB
 Cached:         127600 kB
 SwapCached:       6308 kB
 Active:         626132 kB
 Inactive:        75452 kB
 HighTotal:           0 kB
 HighFree:            0 kB
 LowTotal:       774856 kB
 LowFree:         22952 kB
 SwapTotal:     1116476 kB
 SwapFree:       647064 kB
 Dirty:              12 kB
 Writeback:           0 kB
 Mapped:         621524 kB
 Slab:            28268 kB
 CommitLimit:   1503904 kB
 Committed_AS:  1146312 kB
 PageTables:       2472 kB
 VmallocTotal:   245752 kB
 VmallocUsed:      8992 kB
 VmallocChunk:   236384 kB


Nothing indicates a lack of memory.
I'm running the following version of python :

Python 2.4.3 (#2, Apr 27 2006, 14:43:58)
[GCC 4.0.3 (Ubuntu 4.0.3-1ubuntu5)]

Does somebody has an idea about what's happening ?

Many thanks for your time,
Brice