large core file from more

[Jerry Bell]

Earlier today, I was trying to look at a session file created by
squirrelmail.  I did a "more <filename>".  It put up one page of the file,
but when I tried to scroll down, it gave the error message:
more in malloc(): error: allocation failed
Abort (core dumped)

I logged in on a new session and killed the process (had to use -9).  What
is left is a 537038848 byte core file.  Mind you, the file I was running
more on is 896656 bytes.

I've never seen anything like this, and the system has been working fine
for months.  It's not a problem at all for me, but I figured it may be a
symptom of a bigger problem.

Here is the info on my system:
FreeBSD web1.stelesys.com 5.2.1-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE-p9 #0:
Mon Aug 30 11:48:25 EDT 2004   
jerry at web1.stelesys.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

Any ideas what could have happened?

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org