[tlbuild] clisp building on alpha-linux

[Bruno Haible]

Jörg Sommer wrote:
> > $ free
> >              total       used       free     shared    buffers    cached
> > Mem:        254112     246776       7336          0       3096     79856
> > -/+ buffers/cache:     163824      90288
> > Swap:       775832       2320     773512
> > 
> > So swap was hardly touched, so it doesn't really look like a ENOMEM
> > error, more some problem with the mmap code.
> 
> Your swap can't be used for mmap.

Not true. Swap space is used for mmap. The difference between swap space and
true RAM is that when a program uses mlock after mmap, only the true RAM
counts. But clisp does not use mlock.

> The numbers of free, buffers and cached are really low.

That's normal. The number for "free" in the first line means "unused" or
"wasted"; it has to be low if the OS is doing its job properly and the machine
has been in use for some time. "buffers" and "cached" refer to the file system
cache; it indicates how many file related operations the OS had to do recently.
Low values are entirely normal here.

The number that matters for applications is under "free" in the second line.
That's the number that you need to watch most.

Bruno