Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Informix RESIDENT and Solaris 8 and 10 swap usage

52 views
Skip to first unread message

Koya

unread,
Jun 26, 2009, 3:55:28 PM6/26/09
to
Hello all,

I have the follwoing question about RESIDENT and swap usage in
Solaris.

My understanding is if we set RESIDENT value greater than zero, swap
should not be used. If this is corrent, do you have any idea why swap
is in use ?

top command in Solaris 8 displaying 29.9G swap in use, but we have
RESIDENT -1 ( which enables memory to be resident, we have total 3
instances on this server using 29 GB of memory, the following onstat
output shows 27GB on one instance, other two instances use 1.8 GB)

onstat -
IBM Informix Dynamic Server Version 10.00.FC10 -- On-Line -- Up 27
days 03:41:08 -- 27467776 Kbytes

both in Sol 8 and 10 "swap" command displaying swap used ( 31GB and
33GB).

swap -s
total: 29885536k bytes allocated + 1466440k reserved = 31351976k used,
17550648k available

top command output ( Solaris 8 ) :

load averages: 3.59, 2.56, 2.21 14:14:49
220 processes: 213 sleeping, 1 zombie, 3 stopped, 3 on cpu
CPU states: 78.1% idle, 13.0% user, 3.6% kernel, 5.2% iowait, 0.0%
swap
Memory: 48.0G real, 13.6G free, 29.9G swap in use, 16.7G swap free

PID USERNAME THR PR NCE SIZE RES STATE TIME FLTS CPU
COMMAND
23520 informix 5 30 -10 26.2G 26.2G cpu23 125.7H 0 3.04% oninit
23526 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 174.5H 0 2.55% oninit
23506 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 132.2H 0 2.24% oninit
23521 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 110.9H 0 1.88% oninit
23522 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 98.4H 0 1.84% oninit
23525 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 189.7H 0 1.57% oninit
23527 informix 5 50 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 163.9H 0 1.34% oninit
23524 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 77.5H 0 1.17% oninit
23529 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 151.5H 0 1.01% oninit
23523 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 88.5H 0 1.00% oninit
23528 informix 5 59 -10 26.2G 26.2G sleep 156.6H 0 0.88% oninit

Solaris 10 :
========

We have Solaris 10 server has total 5 instances assigned/using 23 GB,
top command display is little bit different, which does not show "swap
in use ", but total swap ( does this mean swap in use ? think so
because available is another 47GB)

swap -s
total: 16559736k bytes allocated + 16692216k reserved = 33251952k
used, 47252080k available

load averages: 1.90, 1.91, 1.98; up
12+12:04:20
14:36:17
223 processes: 214 sleeping, 1 zombie, 2 stopped, 6 on cpu
CPU states: 87.8% idle, 7.2% user, 5.0% kernel, 0.0% iowait, 0.0%
swap
Memory: 48G phys mem, 24G free mem, 38G total swap, 38G free swap

PID USERNAME LWP PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME CPU COMMAND
5622 root 1 50 0 10M 7368K cpu/17 0:08 4.13% cputst
1261 informix 1 59 -10 2887M 879M cpu/3 94:19 1.80% oninit
20364 root 11 59 0 26M 15M sleep 58:17 0.78% bpbkar
279 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2984M cpu/16 349:04 0.48% oninit
283 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2977M cpu/9 308:43 0.43% oninit
170 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2997M sleep 286:40 0.41% oninit
281 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2981M sleep 310:20 0.41% oninit
280 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2983M sleep 329:45 0.40% oninit
282 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2973M cpu/19 260:14 0.39% oninit
239 informix 2 59 -10 7706M 2991M sleep 334:40 0.35% oninit
1257 informix 2 59 -10 2889M 1068M sleep 204:39 0.25% oninit

-- Chavan

da...@smooth1.co.uk

unread,
Jun 26, 2009, 4:11:14 PM6/26/09
to

Solaris 8 and Solaris 10 manage memory differently..

Ian Michael Gumby

unread,
Jun 28, 2009, 1:48:03 PM6/28/09
to da...@smooth1.co.uk, inform...@iiug.org


> From: da...@smooth1.co.uk
> Subject: Re: Informix RESIDENT and Solaris 8 and 10 swap usage
> Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:11:14 -0700
> To: inform...@iiug.org
>
> On 26 June, 20:55, Koya <chav...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I  have the follwoing question about RESIDENT and swap usage in
> > Solaris.
> >
> > My understanding is if we set RESIDENT value greater than zero, swap
> > should not be used. If this is corrent, do you have any idea why swap
> > is in use ?
> >
[SNIP]

>
> Solaris 8 and Solaris 10 manage memory differently..

Bzzt!
C'mon the 'residency' flag has been part of Informix long before Solaris 8 existed.

'forced residency' is a bit of misnomer.

As to the OP's issue of swap being used, even if RESIDENT is set to true, if your machine needs to swap, then it will swap. 


Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®. See how.

theBP

unread,
Jun 28, 2009, 3:30:06 PM6/28/09
to

It may be worthwhile being aware of the following in the ids_machine_notes_11.50.txt.

Not sure whether this is causing your symptoms, but worthwhile having a consideration of this area :

c) IDS Failure with a Large Intimate Shared Memory Page Size

On certain hardware configurations, Solaris 10 can use very large
memory pages for Solaris Intimate Shared Memory (ISM): 32 MB or
256 MB instead of the previous limit of 4 MB. IDS uses Solaris ISM
for shared memory segments that are forced to be memory-resident by
the RESIDENT configuration parameter, however IDS might experience
problems if 32 MB or 256 MB pages are used by Solaris (APAR
36804462).

If you receive a message that contiguous shared memory segment
allocation failed and the value of the SHMBASE configuration
parameter is the same as its value in onconfig.std, then IDS might
fail unexpectedly. To prevent this problem, set the Solaris 10
operating system mmu_ism_pagesize configuration parameter to limit
the memory pages to 4 MB for ISM. To set this parameter, edit the
/etc/system file and add the following line:

set mmu_ism_pagesize = 4194304

Then restart the Solaris computer.

Eric Rowell

unread,
Jun 29, 2009, 9:42:49 AM6/29/09
to Koya, inform...@iiug.org
Koya ,
    Wish I still had access to my old Solaris systems (past live), this is what I remember.
 
    There was a change to the mapping and controls of Solaris shared memory.   Solaris started tracking shared memory usage which when running Inforix or other applications which share memory caused memory usage to sky rocket.  There is a mapping page for the shared memory which is used by the OS to protect memory and track the application which currently has access to the mapped page.   I think we had to set something to stop this from happening (Solaris setting).  Once we did memory worked as it did in the past and it was up to the application to protect it's self.   I cannot find the details in my notes since the SA's handled it.  I hope this helps get you in the right direction.
 
Eric
 
 
_______________________________________________
Informix-list mailing list
Inform...@iiug.org
http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list



--
Eric B. Rowell

Koya

unread,
Jun 29, 2009, 11:09:11 AM6/29/09
to
On Jun 28, 12:48 pm, Ian Michael Gumby <im_gu...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > From: da...@smooth1.co.uk
> > Subject: Re: Informix RESIDENT and Solaris 8 and 10 swap usage
> > Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:11:14 -0700
> > To: informix-l...@iiug.org

>
> > On 26 June, 20:55, Koya <chav...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hello all,
>
> > > I  have the follwoing question about RESIDENT and swap usage in
> > > Solaris.
>
> > > My understanding is if we set RESIDENT value greater than zero, swap
> > > should not be used. If this is corrent, do you have any idea why swap
> > > is in use ?
>
> [SNIP]
>
> > Solaris 8 and Solaris 10 manage memory differently..
>
> Bzzt!
> C'mon the 'residency' flag has been part of Informix long before Solaris 8 existed.
>
> 'forced residency' is a bit of misnomer.
>
> As to the OP's issue of swap being used, even if RESIDENT is set to true, if your machine needs to swap, then it will swap.  
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®.http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/QuickAdd?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM...- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Yes, RESIDENT flag is part of Informix and exists long before Solaris
8.

-- Chavan

Koya

unread,
Jun 29, 2009, 11:12:02 AM6/29/09
to
>         Then restart the Solaris computer.- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

BP,
We are using IDS 10 version and Solaris 8, I also verified
version 10 machine notes but Intimate Shared Memory ( ISM) is about
Solaris 10. Thank you though.

-- Chavan

Koya

unread,
Jun 29, 2009, 11:17:56 AM6/29/09
to
> > Informix-l...@iiug.org
> >http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list
>
> --
> Eric B. Rowell- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Hi Eric,
Thanks for the reply. I am looking into Solaris Internals.
Will let you know if I find someting.
-- Chavan

Koya

unread,
Jul 7, 2009, 4:30:47 PM7/7/09
to
> -- Chavan- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

I got the follwoing info from unix admin. Which explains why.

Swap –l shows you the actual swap space configured on the disk, in
which case the following output shows:

root# swap -l

swapfile dev swaplo blocks free

/dev/md/dsk/d31 85,31 16 16779296 16764688

This means that all of the swap space pages on the disk is currently
not in use so all of the mem pages for the database is actually in
physical memory.

swap –l only lists the swap areas and does not include swap space in
the form of physical memory.

So top command reports the swap space in the form of physical memory.

-- Chavan


0 new messages