what's with malloc()?

[utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!joe]

Would someone please tell me what's the story with malloc()?  We are
running 4.1bsd, and found that some programs would do strange things
when asked to malloc(16).  Then we installed the NEW IMPROVED malloc
from berkeley's update tape, and those problems went away.  But now
other programs blow up!

The old malloc.c says "malloc.c 4.1 Berkeley" and has the familiar
definitions of GRANULE and ASSERT.  The new one has no comments at
all, and doesn't have a GRANULE or ifdef pdp11 in it.  Can anyone
tell me what's going on?

{seismo,mcnc,we13}!rlgvax!cvl!joe