Allocate RAM wait a minute and exit. Useful for flushing caches etc. Can chose between malloc and calloc.

mallocer.c

/*

        Program to allocate MB of memory. Can chose between calloc and malloc implementations.
        Author: nic doye http://worldofnic.org
        Date: 2011.03.31
        Last update: 2012.10.16

*/

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>

extern int errno;

void usage(char *);

int main( int argc, char *argv[])
{
        size_t meg = 1024 * 1024;
        size_t elsize = sizeof(char);
        char *result;
        char *progname = argv[0];

        if ( argc != 3 )
        {
                usage(progname);
        }
        else
        {
                char *p;
                errno = 0;
                long number_of_meg = strtol(argv[2], &p, 0);
                if ( !strcmp(p,argv[2]) )
                {
                        printf ( "Command line error (%d) \n", errno );
                }
                else
                {
                        size_t nelem = meg * number_of_meg;
                        printf ("Allocation %zu of size %zu\n", nelem, elsize);

                        errno = 0;
                        if ( !strncmp(argv[1],"c",0) )
                        {
                                result = (char *) calloc( nelem, elsize );
                        }
                        else if ( !strncmp(argv[1],"m",0) )
                        {
                                result = (char *) malloc( nelem * elsize );
                        }
                        else
                        {
                                usage(progname);
                        }

                        if ( result == NULL )
                        {
                                if ( &errno != NULL )
                                {
                                        perror ( "Memory error" );
                                }
                        }
                        else
                        {
                                sleep( 60 );
                        }
                }
        }
}

void usage(char *progname)
{
        printf("Usage: %s [c|m] n\nwhere c would call calloc and m malloc\nand n is the number of MB to allocate\n", progname);
        exit(-1);
}