I run NetBSD-1.1 on my i486 system with 16 megabytes of RAM and a bit
over 70 megabytes of swap space. I use XFree86 version 3.1.2.

I've been using X, gs, and Un*x (BSD and SysV) for years, but I've
never had to deal with this error before, and I'm learning that I'm
pretty clueless when it comes to figuring out who is responsible for
my problem.

Here, in a nutshell, is my problem:
X Error of failed request:  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  45 (X_OpenFont)
  Serial number of failed request:  405
  Current serial number in output stream:  406

I get this message from ghostsript when I run a command like
> gs colorcir.ps
where colorcir.ps is an example file distributed with ghostscript (so
it should work!).

There is no string in the ghostscript code that looks anything like
the message I'm getting, and I haven't been able to dedicate resources
to having the X11R6/XFree86 sources on my system so I can't search
there to figure out what's up. Obviously NetBSD is not responsible for
printing this error message, so it's not an obvious first place to
look.

At first I thought my gs process was running into system resource
limits, so I tried
> unlimit <everything>
where <everything> was instantiated, one by one, as every resource
name printed by tcsh when I type
> limit

To my great disappoinment and frustration, this didn't solve my
problem. I now have huge resource limits, but someone claims to be
running out of resources and I can't figure out who the hell it is, or
what makes them think some resource(s) isn't/aren't available. What
resources is it talking about? Who prints the error message? How can I
figure out what the problem is? How can I fix it?

Is this a bug in XFree86? That seems to be the most likely candidate
since it happens the same way with two versions of ghostscript (3.53
and 2.6.2), and other programs (including X clients) seem to work just
fine under NetBSD.

What is X_OpenFont? Where is it documented? I have searched for that
name in all the documentation (including XFree86 documentation) and
source code (including ghostscript source) I have, and unless I've
overlooked something it simply isn't there.

Has anyone gotten, e.g., colorcir.ps to display under XFree86 using
ghostscript under NetBSD? How did you do it? What am I doing wrong?

Which piece of the conspiring software needs better documentation, or
what obvious document have I overlooked that would have explained this
problem to me?

Please help! Many thanks for any advice or assistance!

Please respond by e-mail directly to me (robert@cs.stanford.edu),
since I can't read all the lists I've posted this question to.

	-- Robert Kennedy