> are you willing
Yes, so long as I don't need root, I can follow instructions OK.
By the way, the same thing (memory leak 2.5.2) occurred on Centos 4.6, a
different Linux box.  Lets proceed on that Centos 4.6 box.  Here are the
particulars:

Python-2.5.2]$ file python
python: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for
GNU/Linux 2.4.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

[tony@hathi Python-2.5.2]$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-9)
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[tony@hathi Python-2.5.2]$ cat /etc/redhat-release[tony@hathi CentOS
release 4.6 (Final)

[tony@hathi Python-2.5.2]$ uname -a
Linux hathi.ambric.local 2.6.9-67.0.15.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu May 8 10:50:20
EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

(after make test)
test_largefile
test_linuxaudiodev
test_linuxaudiodev skipped -- Use of the `audio' resource not enabled
test_list
(stalls here so I dumped it)
make: *** [test] Quit

(another window, just before I dumped it)
top - 01:36:31 up 4 days, 15:07,  5 users,  load average: 2.70, 0.84, 0.32
Tasks:  87 total,   1 running,  86 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  3.8% us,  9.7% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id, 86.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.5% si
Mem:  15639112k total, 15610836k used,    28276k free,      280k buffers
Swap: 24579440k total,  1533172k used, 23046268k free,    57676k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI %CPU    TIME+  %MEM  VIRT  RES  SHR S COMMAND
17190 tony      24   0   17   1:05.49 90.9 32.2g  13g 7200 D python
   69 root      16   0    6   0:12.97  0.0     0    0    0 D kswapd0