2^n (was: weird g++ behavior)

["Bryan Jurish" <moocow@ling.uni-potsdam.de>]

hi Elizabeth, hi list,

first of all, thanks for your suggestions, Elizabeth --
a 'crashme.sh' script was in fact very helpful...

turns out, the machine (same procedure on another box
ran fine) crashed g++ only with my 256MB ram-bar in slot-0
and my 512MB bar in slot-1 ... go figure.  each bar alone:
kosher.  also, things appear fine when the 512MB
bar precedes its less capacitous cousin.  argh.

i can definitely live with this, but can anyone explain
to me why this must be so?  (mainboard/bios bug is my
personal guess, but i'm truly stumped...)  did some
goofball go and assume that everyone on the planet has
2^n bytes of ram?or is it just a swing-a-dead-chicken-
over-your-head-at-midnight-on-a-new-moon-whilst-
invoking-eldritch-and-mystic-powers sort of thing?

argh, peace, love, and marmosets,
      moocow

ps - another odd diagnostic (for the record): from the old
SuSE installation:

 suse# chroot /debian crashme.sh

also produced the errors... whereas SuSE itself never
had any problems with the compilation that weren't my
fault ;-)