Re: [Summary-Talk] Re: strtable.cpp bug?

[Jason Linhart <jason@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John May wrote:
> 
> I have no idea why one machine does it and the other doesn't.  I've
> run ram tests, etc, etc and just can't figure out a difference
> between the two.

I have two leading theories at this point.

Very subtly bad RAM could cause this. There have been reports of RAM
that works almost all of the time, passes all of the memory testers, but
when replaced fixes otherwise inexplicably unstable machines.
Particularly when you have more than one DIMM of RAM, if the first one
works the machine can prove very stable unless you are running something
like Summary which uses a great deal of RAM. Switching machines is a
good test for this, particularly if the machines were purchased at
different times and/or have RAM from different vendors.

There was a problem with earlier versions of OS X where heavy network
activity would corrupt the contents of application memory, but only very
rarely. At least some cases of this are fixed in 10.3.9, but it seems
possible that Apple hasn't fixed all of them. If this is the problem,
switching machines in the same configuration won't make any difference,
but switching to a machine behind a more restrictive firewall or
disconnected from the Internet would solve the problem.

Of course this could still be a bug in Summary, and I am still testing
for that. If anyone has a configuration that fails frequently I would
love to get details about your setup to see if there are any clues I can
use to isolate the problem.

Jason

-- 
Jason@Summary.Net
--
Dr. Seuss books . . . can be read and enjoyed on several levels. For
example, 'One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish' can be deconstructed
as a searing indictment of the narrow-minded binary counting system.
    -- Peter van der Linden, Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets
-------------
Go to <http://summary.net/list.html> to update subscription info.