[daip] VLAPROCS blew CORE

[Eric Greisen]

Pedro Manuel Augusto writes:
 > 
 > Dear colleague,
 > 
 > I have AIPS installed in a Red Hat Linux System in a PC. For a few months
 > I have been using it successfully to reduce VLA data and everything has
 > worked fine, so far (already a few tens of maps have been produced).
 > Today, with no apparent reason, I got  a "blew core" error when running
 > VLAPROCS (see below). Any thoughts on the reason? The disk (only one) has
 > 51% of capacity (18 Gb) available. Maybe some specific directory inside
 > AIPS is full after all these maps?

The "core" it "blew" is the memory contained in the POPS language
processor, having nothing to do with your computer.

When a POPS procedure is compiled for a second time, the memory it
used from the first time is not recovered.  You must issue a COMPRESS
command to recover that memory.  Note, however, that if you RUN
VLAPROCS once you do NOT have to do it again.  The POPS memory kept
from one session to the next keeps the procedures compiled during that
RUN command.  If you repeatedly RUN VLAPROCS then you will eventually
BLOW CORE unless you also use compress.  Unfortunately, once you have
blown core, the compress command will not (probably) work.  A RESTORE
0 is required followed by a RUN VLAPROCS.  Note too that the command
CORE will show you the current state of the core usage (3 parts).

Eric Greisen