FATAL error during quid operation

Summary: After a few days of operation squid suddently dies.

Detail:

Box: Dell 2300 Poweredge, 512Mb RAM, 512Mb Swap (partitions), 6x9Gb
of which 5 x 9Gb are for cache_dirs.

Version: Squid 2.2PRE1

Extract from cache.log:

...
1999/03/18 17:01:36| Completed Validation Procedure
1999/03/18 17:01:36| Validated 482307 Entries
1999/03/18 17:01:36| store_swap_size = 4956842k
1999/03/18 17:01:37| storeLateRelease: released 7 objects
FATAL: Received Segment Violation...dying.

Then it is restarted by a supervisory process:
1999/03/18 17:03:55| storeDirWriteCleanLogs: Starting...
1999/03/18 17:03:55| 65536 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:55| 131072 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:55| 196608 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:55| 262144 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:56| 327680 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:56| 393216 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:56| 458752 entries written so far.
1999/03/18 17:03:56| Finished. Wrote 482331 entries.
1999/03/18 17:03:56| Took 1 seconds (482331.0 entries/sec).
CPU Usage: 11.115 seconds
Maximum Resident Size: 44688 KB
Page faults with physical i/o: 0
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Starting Squid Cache version 2.2.PRE1 for i386-unknown-freebsd3.0...
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Process ID 2445
1999/03/18 17:03:57| With 1064 file descriptors available
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Performing DNS Tests...
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Successful DNS name lookup tests...
1999/03/18 17:03:57| helperOpenServers: Starting 5 'dnsserver' processes
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Unlinkd pipe opened on FD 14
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Swap maxSize 43069440 KB, estimated 3313033 objects
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Target number of buckets: 66260
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Using 65536 Store buckets, replacement runs every 1 second
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Max Mem size: 409600 KB
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Max Swap size: 43069440 KB
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Store logging disabled
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Rebuilding storage in Cache Dir #0 (CLEAN)
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Rebuilding storage in Cache Dir #1 (CLEAN)
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Rebuilding storage in Cache Dir #2 (CLEAN)
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Rebuilding storage in Cache Dir #3 (CLEAN)
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Rebuilding storage in Cache Dir #4 (CLEAN)
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Loaded Icons.
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Accepting HTTP connections on port 80, FD 44.
1999/03/18 17:03:57| Accepting ICP messages on port 3130, FD 45.
999/03/18 17:03:57| Ready to serve requests.
1999/03/18 17:03:59| 65536 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:00| 131072 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:01| 196608 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:02| 262144 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:03| 327680 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:04| 393216 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 458752 Entries read so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Done reading Cache Dir #2 swaplog (93813 entries)
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Done reading Cache Dir #0 swaplog (95903 entries)
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Done reading Cache Dir #4 swaplog (97048 entries)
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Done reading Cache Dir #3 swaplog (97135 entries)
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Done reading Cache Dir #1 swaplog (98432 entries)
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Finished rebuilding storage disk.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 482331 Entries read from previous logfile.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 0 Entries scanned from swap files.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 0 Invalid entries.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 0 With invalid flags.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 482325 Objects loaded.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 0 Objects expired.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 0 Objects cancelled.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 3 Duplicate URLs purged.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| 3 Swapfile clashes avoided.
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Took 9 seconds (53591.7 objects/sec).
1999/03/18 17:04:06| Beginning Validation Procedure
1999/03/18 17:04:07| 65536 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:07| 131072 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:07| 196608 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:08| 262144 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:08| 327680 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:08| 393216 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:09| 458752 Entries Validated so far.
1999/03/18 17:04:09| Completed Validation Procedure
1999/03/18 17:04:09| Validated 482325 Entries
1999/03/18 17:04:09| store_swap_size = 4957062k
1999/03/18 17:04:09| storeLateRelease: released 8 objects

%df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/da0s1a 99183 20413 70836 22% /
/dev/da0s1f 7910512 764643 6513029 11% /usr
/dev/da0s1e 99183 2237 89012 2% /var
/dev/da1c 8615320 1014464 7600856 12% /d1
/dev/da2c 8615320 1014577 7600743 12% /d2
/dev/da3c 8615320 1014036 7601284 12% /d3
/dev/da4c 8615320 1014620 7600700 12% /d4
/dev/da5c 8615320 1014418 7600902 12% /d5
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc

uname -a
FreeBSD cache.tibus.net 3.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE #1: Thu Feb 4 14:48:06 GMT 1999 pgregg@cache.tibus.net:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC i386

From "top"
ast pid: 2491; load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 17:58:38
26 processes: 1 running, 25 sleeping
CPU states: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle
Mem: 60M Active, 3268K Inact, 42M Wired, 396M Cache, 7079K Buf, 1132K Free
Swap: 512M Total, 2768K Used, 509M Free, 1% Inuse

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND
 2445 root 2 0 56256K 54852K poll 0:36 0.31% 0.31% squid

In the squid.conf:

cache_mem 400 MB

It may be the cache_mem which is wrong, however:

a) does anyone know why squid bombs out so badly,
b) what would a recommended cache_mem be for this particular box?

Thanks in advance

Paul.

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