Why has my swap pager gone nuts?

[Sean Page]

For what it's worth, I have two 4.8 (RELEASE) Servers that run out of memory
and core out of Perl every time I do a "make index" inside /usr/ports.
(Which didn't happen in 4.7)
Could it be related? Here's the specs on one of them:

CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  1.9% interrupt, 98.1%
idle
Mem: 98M Active, 26M Inact, 39M Wired, 28K Cache, 41M Buf, 148M Free
Swap: 576M Total, 576M Free

Copyright (c) 1992-2003 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE #11: Mon Apr  7 13:58:59 MDT 2003
Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (267.27-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x633  Stepping = 3
 
Features=0x80f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,M
MX>
real memory  = 335544320 (327680K bytes)
avail memory = 322383872 (314828K bytes)
Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc03af000.
Pentium Pro MTRR support enabled
md0: Malloc disk
Using $PIR table, 7 entries at 0xc00f0cc0
npx0: <math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: <Intel 82443LX (440 LX) host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
pcib1: <Intel 82443LX (440 LX) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1
isab0: <Intel 82371AB PCI to ISA bridge> at device 4.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 ATA33 controller> port 0xd800-0xd80f at device 4.1 on
pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
uhci0: <Intel 82371AB/EB (PIIX4) USB controller> port 0xd400-0xd41f irq 12
at device 4.2 on pci0
usb0: <Intel 82371AB/EB (PIIX4) USB controller> on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
chip1: <Intel 82371AB Power management controller> port 0xe800-0xe80f at
device 4.3 on pci0
xl0: <3Com 3c905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL> port 0xd000-0xd07f mem
0xe1000000-0xe100007f irq 10 at device 10.0 on pci0
xl0: Ethernet address: 00:10:4b:62:1b:59
miibus0: <MII bus> on xl0
xlphy0: <3Com internal media interface> on miibus0
xlphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
pci0: <ATI Mach64-GV graphics accelerator> at 12.0 irq 11
orm0: <Option ROM> at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff on isa0
fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0
fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/9 bytes threshold
plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0
lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0
IP packet filtering initialized, divert enabled, rule-based forwarding
enabled, default to deny, logging limited to 200 packets/entr
y by default
ad0: 9773MB <FUJITSU MPF3102AT> [19857/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33