pdb question - spew out "steps" until crash needed

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <7xbqcd4s2y.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>, Paul Rubin wrote:

> However, the malloc problem has probably already screwed things up
> long before the application actually freezes.  Your best bet is
> to recompile Python with malloc debugging enabled and/or run Python
> itself under a debugger.

A simple thing to try would be to invoke Python with MALLOC_CHECK_ set to 3.
This enables extra checking in the glibc malloc routine, which might help
shed some light on the problem.