memory leak while using vaccum

I am running a PostgreSQL 7.1.3 on a Intel Pentium III
My operating system is SuSE Linux 7.1 with Kernel 2.4.4 (ELF)
I compiled postgresql with gcc 2.95.2

My problem:
when using "vacuum analyze <tablename>" on very large tables (I have one
with about 30GB) the memory usage increases continues until no memory is
left and the kernel stops this process.

I suppose this problem is easy to reproduce. Just create a table, fill
very much data into it, create an index and run vacuum anayze <table>

I hope you will find a solution :-)

greetings,
Achim Kruemmel