I installed MEAD (all the required modules have been installed by our
admins in advance) and now I try to run the GA3-sample-data that comes
with the package.

This is the error I get:

melita@moleme:/srv/www/mead/data/GA3$ mead.pl -w -a 100 GA3

Using system rc-file: /srv/www/mead/bin/../.meadrc
Warning: Can't find user rc-file
Cluster: /srv/www/mead/bin/../data/GA3/GA3.cluster
Empty DBM /srv/www/mead/etc/enidf at
/srv/www/mead/bin/../lib//Essence/IDF.pm line 43.
Ran out of memory for input buffer at /usr/lib/perl5/XML/Parser/Expat.pm
line 469, <GEN0> line 305.
Ran out of memory for input buffer at /usr/lib/perl5/XML/Parser/Expat.pm
line 469, <RC> line 5.

Solution:
recreate your database file enidf by using the script write-idf.pl;
to do that you issue the command: perl write-idf.pl enidf enidf.txt
and you put back the newly created databases enidf.pag and enidf.dir under the etc directory"