malloc: not enough core

[Jeffrey W Percival]

We are running Ultrix 3.0 on MicroVAX II's and VS2000's.  We
are seeing something new and unusual:  once in a while a user
will type "df", for example, and get the message "malloc: not
enough core".

We have seen this while running the News expire program, as
well as when running a large data analysis program.  What's the
deal here?  How can a virtual memory machine deny memory to
the puny df(1) program?
-- 
Jeff Percival (jwp at larry.sal.wisc.edu)