Re: [TCLUG:6710] log message "kernel: Sound error: Couldn't allocat

[Luke Francl <fran0382@tc.umn.edu>]

On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Steve Siegfried wrote:

> 
> 
> Thanks, Jon.  Seems like a big hammer for a small nail, but I'm missing enough
> incoming mail when the "You've Got Mail!" audio snippet fails out of coolmail
> that's it's well worth my time to try it.
> 

Hi, I have the same problem on my machine. As others have mentioned, it's
a PC architecture problem. If you're not anxious to try the "big hammer",
here's two things that have worked for me:

1) The stupid solution: Free up memory by running "updatedb" on as many
terms as I can simultaneously. I did this before I started using X
regularly -- opening netscape all the time seemed to alleviate most of my
problems. All this does is use a ton of memory, then give it back.

2) The better solution. I read this on a kernel mailing list. Get the
ftape package for tape backups. Since tape backup drives also need DMA
memory, this problem affects them, too. So they made a program called
"swapout" which takes N megs of memory and puts it into swap. Choose N to
be sufficently large enough, and your problems will go away. This works
well for me: swapout -30

Finally, there's the most drastic solution I've read, which is, only have
16 megs of memory in your machine ;^) There's no way you can not have
memory available in the first 16 megs, then...

If you try out any of the kernel patching solutions people have suggested,
I'd be interested in hearing the outcome. I'd give a lot to see this
problem banished on my machine...

Luke