The Solaris compiler really has some useless error messages. I get “Reallocation failure in ySpace()” occasionally when compiling under SunOS with the forte compiler. The compilation fails and I’m left scratching my head.
This error message is really awful. The message doesn’t tell you what went wrong, why the “Reallocation” failed, or any hints to correct the situation. Who was this message targetting? It certainly wasn’t the user of the compiler who, after all, is only interested in why his compilation has failed. Had the message been written with the user in mind it would have said something useful about the situation.
Enough harping about useless error messages…
After digging around for twenty minutes I figured out the underlying problem. The compiler ran out of swap space. You can monitor your swap utilization by running:
sh$ vmstat -S 5
This will print out the available swap every 5 seconds so you can see how the available swap is fluctuating. I observed the swap space going from 80 megs down to zero when my compile failed.
To increase the available swap, find a location with plenty of space and do the following:
sh$ mkfile [swap size. eg. "64m"] [location] sh$ swap -a [location]
To remove this swap later execute:
swap -d [location]
Code, Tech, Methodologies 