SUMMARY: Q: swap space

Tuna Tugcu (tuna@tunafish.cmpe.boun.edu.tr)
Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:33:18 +0200 (EET)

Hi SMs,
Sorry for another late summary; well, may be it is not even worth for
a summary since it turned out to be unrelated to Solaris. The error was
due to an error in the tool and some mistakes in my simulation model. I
applied a patch supplied by mil3 and also corrected the errors in my
model to solve the problem.

Sincerely,
Tuna Tugcu

Special thanks go to:
SW <shubin@brain2.nida.nih.gov>
Joseph S D Yao <jsdy@tux.org>
rene@iusti.univ-mrs.fr (Mr Rene Occelli)
Matt Reynolds <reynolmd@aston.ac.uk>
bbyoung@amoco.com (Brad Young )
bwalker@sfa.org.uk
Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>

Here is the original question:
************************************************************************
Dear SMs,
I have made some changes on vfstab to increase my swap space
(solaris
2.5). Now I'm having some memory problems with a simulation tool.
Before accusing the software for improper use of memory I want to make
sure that I haven't done something wrong.
Below you can find the related lines from vfstab (two disks
available):
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 - - swap - no -
swap - /tmp tmpfs - yes -
/dev/dsk/c0t2d0s1 - - swap - no -
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 - - swap - no -

Here is the output of "swap -l":
swapfile dev swaplo blocks free
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 32,1 16 262944 252016
/dev/dsk/c0t2d0s1 32,17 16 262944 253216
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 32,4 16 293344 283312

I'm looking forward to your replies.

Sincerely,
Tuna
************************************************************************

Here are the replies:

************************************************************************
From: SW <shubin@brain2.nida.nih.gov>

Please check your /etc/system see if you have setup shared memory.
My users running big imaging analysis applications on Solaris2.5,
which needs an entry in the file like the following line:

set shmsys: shminfo_shmmax = 512000000

And you need to reboot the machine after you added the line.

Good luck!

Shubin
************************************************************************
From: Joseph S D Yao <jsdy@tux.org>

Go into format / partition, and make sure that no partitions overlap!

Also, I don't remember exactly, but ISTM that Sun's swap schema is one
of the ones that interleaves partitions. In that case, your swap size
would be (number of partitions) X (size of smallest partition). You
might want to double-check that (a) the swap partitions are indeed the
same size [without overlapping others], and (b) Sun's swap does in fact
interleave as I have said.

Joe Yao jsdy@cais.com - Joseph S. D. Yao
(temporarily relocated)
************************************************************************
From: rene@iusti.univ-mrs.fr (Mr Rene Occelli)

Hi,

The entry looks correct.

Can you send me the output of swap -s

************************************************************************
From: Matt Reynolds <reynolmd@aston.ac.uk>

Make sure /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 and /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 don't overlap at
all. (Do a "format" - "partition" - "print" to see the partition
table).

It shouldn't work if they overlap, but you might find it just
coincidentally works for a while before hitting a part of the shared
section.

Matt.

-- 
# Matthew Reynolds,                | Email: reynolmd@aston.ac.uk     #
# Aston Space Geodesy              | Web: www.aston.ac.uk/~reynolmd  #
# Aston University, Birmingham,    | Phone: (+44) 121-359-3611 x4552 #
# B4 7ET. England, Earth.          | Fax:   (+44) 121-333-3389       #
************************************************************************
From: bbyoung@amoco.com (Brad Young )

> Here is the output of "swap -l": > swapfile dev swaplo blocks free > /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 32,1 16 262944 252016 > /dev/dsk/c0t2d0s1 32,17 16 262944 253216 > /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 32,4 16 293344 283312

Having two swap partitions on a single spindle, as above with c0t0, can = cause performance problems. Think of all the extra travel the write heads for = the c0t0 spindle has to do when writing to two separate areas on the disk.

Good Luck, Brad ************************************************************************ From: bwalker@sfa.org.uk

Here's the equivalent on my 2.5.1 1000E server :

# swap -l swapfile dev swaplo blocks free /dev/md/dsk/d4 85,4 8 525160 464336 /dev/md/dsk/d5 85,5 8 1026136 965440

# grep swap /etc/vfstab swap - /tmp tmpfs - yes - /dev/md/dsk/d4 - - swap - no - /dev/md/dsk/d5 - - swap - no -

So, your entries look fine to me. ************************************************************************ From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>

I'm not sure how much memory your tool needs, but it seems that almost none of your swap is in use.

Casper