Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 16:38:21 +0900
From: Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To: bdavidson AT ra DOT isisnet DOT com
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Should "topline" report MORE memory than GO32 does? [was: Ramdrive]

   to you (although  was _pretty_ sure).  Now go32 reports 1400Kb, and 
   topline under info reports 1768Kb!! (aside: surely KB not Kb; I always 

Any gurus out there know what's going on here?  Looks like something
is confused about how much memory there is!  Is it GO32 or Info or
what?

   thought KB meant KiloBytes and Kb meant Kilobits!).

Pedant.
    The rest of this is rather FAQ-y; techies can flush the rest of
this message.

   More bad news!  Since I have trouble reading the docs [ ;( ] I don't know 
   how symify works (or what it is); I presume -g means "compile with debug 
   info" (-g == debug; Of course!).  To get this do I have to get all the 
   sources, re-apply the maint releases, and compile?

No. Just get the sources for texinfo.  I guess to be safe you could
reapply the maint releases but I don't recall seeing any texinfo
patches in them.  Symify [usage: symify <executable-with-debug-info>]
generates symbolic (ie, function names) addresses from the numerical
addresses in the stack trace.  It reads the stack trace right off the
screen; so anytime a "-g" compiled executable GPFs, you just run
symify immediately and it tells you where the GPF was, and what
sequence of function calls got you there.

   QUERY: How do I read the top line under GO32=topline?  What is that hex 

From left to right:
<mode-flags>
<path-of-executable>
<address-of-last-call-to-GO32>
<virtual-memory-being-used-in-red> - if paging, will be present, else absent
<protected-memory-used>
<protected-memory-available>
<reason-for-last-page-fault-flags> - malloc, paging, whatever
This may not be entirely accurate, it's from memory.

   number in the middle, and why does it write over everything while 
   everthing writes over the stuff I want to see?  How do I know when go32 
   is paging, etc?

It's pretty simple-minded, just writes to the top line of the screen
at present.  Works well for screen oriented output, tends to not be
there when you want it for line-oriented output (like stdout or
stderr).

   Also, I don't see any docs for symify, although symify is in my bin 
   directory.  Is it buried in there somewhere?  I have spent some time 
   squinting at the .inf files to glean what I can, but haven't seen symify 
   in there.

Nope, docs are the least satisfactory aspect of DJGPP.  You can get
Eli Zaretskii's FAQ (I think it's pretty reliable, but DJ hasn't made
it official yet) at URL

file://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/public-ftp/djgpp/list-archive/EZ-FAQ.beta

if you're on the Web (in which case you might find

http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/#djgpp

of use); or anonymous FTP to my host, directory pub/djgpp/list-archive.

   and protection faults.  That is what I find weird.  The same sequence of 
   commands under the same environment produces different (or differently 
   reported) exceptions at different points in the program.  I would have 
   thought that I would see the problem at *exactly* the same place after 
   *exactly* the same commands (and it would raise the same error message).

It is probably not worth your time to try to gt symify to work on info
stack traces then.  Sounds like an OS problem.

   Thanx, and BTW, I know you must have a REAL job, not just answering my 
   questions, and I sure appreciate the trouble you have taken so far to 
   help me out!  Have a good one yourself, and if you are ever in Halifax, 
   Nova Scotia, look me up and we will share a virtual ale!

Well I get to Toronto occasionally and have brother in Boston, mother
in Woodstock NY.  Maybe....  But I hope it's not virtual!
    As you can see from the host above, I have been a little bit
involved in docs for DJGPP.  Beats doing real work.
    --Steve