R help - Jan 2010 - R jobs keep hanging linux server despite mem.limits modifcations

My group is working with datasets between 100 Mb and 1 GB in size, using
multiple log ins.  From the documentation, it appears that vsize is limited
to 2^30-1, which tends to prove too restrictive for our use.  When we drop
that restriction (set vsize = NA) we end up hanging the server, which
requires a restart.  Is there any way to increase the memory limits on R
while keeping our jobs from hanging?  Having to restart the server is a
major inconvenience, second only to memory limitations in R.
> mem.limits()
    nsize     vsize
100000000        NA
> mem.limits(vsize=2^30)
     nsize      vsize
 100000000 1073741824
> mem.limits(vsize=2^31)
     nsize      vsize
 100000000 1073741824
Warning message:
In structure(.Internal(mem.limits(as.integer(nsize), as.integer(vsize))),  :
  NAs introduced by coercion


--Nathan

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