Intermittent blank page in 2.7

Since upgrading to version 2.7, the blog gives occasional blank pages when you try to access it, either as an administrator or a reader. It can happen when trying to read a post, create a post, access the dashboard, access the plugins; really, it can happen when you access any random page for any purpose on the site. Mostly, it doesn’t happen, but sometimes the problem gets severe, so that you hit refresh five or six times before it will cough up a page, and rebooting the host computer makes it better for a while.

The hosting environment is Mac OS X.4, php5. Problem did not occur for two years until this upgrade. Each time a blank page is generated, it shows in the apache error log as a memory allocation problem. It similarly shows up in php error logging as: [12-Mar-2009 20:28:34] PHP Fatal error: out of dynamic memory in yy_create_buffer() in [path]/wordpress/wp-settings.php on line 273. Sometimes it’s a different line number. I could put in more memory, but I have ample memory as it is, and have observed in the past that an errant script will consume however much new memory one puts in.

I looked at discussion on the forums about the 2.7 blank page problem, but didn’t see one that was exactly on point. I tried without avail the offered suggestions for blank page problems such as removing index.php and recreating it; cleaning cache and trying different browsers (none are immune); deactivating, then removing, all plugins (I don’t use wp-cache); changing to the default theme.

In light of this, I started a new blog sans baggage–no upgrade, new set of tables in the database, default theme, no plugins. Same problem. It seems as though 2.7 finds something disagreeable about the host computer’s configuration.

So I’ve given some thought to moving things to a new host computer, but it would be nice to figure out what the issue here is before punting.