need help with setmemwindow and getmemwindow

[Sushil Singh_1]

Hi All,
I have script which brings oracle down using shutdown command. No users or processes are suppose to be using oracle at this point. But is seems that there are some memory window management processes (setmemwindow) running and aceessing oracle. Is there any way to find out how and where they are started? I could used shutdown immediate, but want to leave it as last resort.

Thanks u all
Sushil Singh

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Check the process ID numbers. You should find that setmemwindow is a parent to the Oracle processes so once Oracle terminates, these parent processes will also terminate. Now you may have related processes that were started in the same memory window as Oracle. These will likely need to be terminated too so that shared memory and other resources are freed.

[Sushil Singh_1]

Hi Bill,
Thank you very much for the reply. I did ps -ef | grep and saw 3 process attached to oracle. 2 were the setmemwindow and one was the svrmgrl, which is started to issue shutdown command. Is there any variable or a switch I can use to turn this feature off?

Thank
Sushil Singh

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Sushill,
the file /etc/services.window will give you tell you who is using memory windows and in which window...

Good luck

Victor

[Bill Hassell]

Actually, these processes were started by your Oracle startup scripts so you'll find setmemwindow in those scripts. It will look something like this:

setmemwindow -i 10 oracle_something params...

NOTE: If you stop using memory windows, you will likely get "out of memory" errors which is the reason that memory windows are in use. It's important to note that memory windows simply changes the memory map for the Oracle processes...it does not talk to Oracle and is the parent process. Your Oracle shutdown script sounds like it needs some help. I hope you are NOT using kill -9 in your script to shutdown Oracle.

[Sushil Singh_1]

Thanks Bill and others,
Very imformative reply. I am investigating the source of problem and as suggested, I am looking in to the oracle startup scripts. /etc/service.windows has nothing in it except for the default value.

Thanks
Sushil Singh

[Bill Hassell]

The /etc/services.window file is really a silly ID-to-name reference. When you run setmemwindow the -i option must be a number. So even if there is a default setting (found in /usr/newconfig/etc/services.window) file, the fact that setmemwindow is running means that some script has used it to start a process. Find all the setmemwindow processes with:

UNIX95= ps -f -C setmemwindow

(notice? no grep necessary) Then find all the child processes for the setmemwindow parents by grepping for the setmemwindow PID(s). In your Oracle startup scripts, grep for setmemwindow.