[PLUG] RPM "memory alloc (12 bytes) returned NULL." error

[Keith Nasman]

This one is for the archives :-)

 This error can occur on machines with limited memory and swap space.
This error occurred on my firewall which has 16Mb RAM and 32Mb swap
space. The cure is to just create some more swap space with the
following procedure.

   1. cd to /
   2. issue "dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=64000" to create
64Mb of swap, change the count value to suit
   3. format the file as swap space: "mkswap swapfile"
   4. use the swapon command to bring the swap space online: "swapon
swapfile"
   5. "swapon" -s will show you your swap file usage
   6. add a line to your /etc/fstab so that the swap file will be used
upon each booting
   7. proceed on with your rpm transaction remembering that while this
transaction will complete, it will be very slow because of all the
swapping to disk.
   


Keith