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Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

 
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TWBSupport
Regular Advisor

/swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Hi All -
About 5 minutes ago, I rec'd a message from my 11i server that /swap1 is at 100% full. EEK! I immediately did a swapinfo -tn & got the following:
swapinfo -tn
Kb Kb Kb PCT START/ Kb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 4194304 0 4194304 0% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
localfs 4190208 0 4190208 0% none 0 0 /swap1/paging
reserve - 8384512 -8384512
memory 6457976 5004248 1453728 77%
total 14842488 13388760 1453728 90% - 0 -

It shows that swap1 has 4190208 free & is not being used.

If I look at /swap1/paging, it is filled with files from aprox 1 hour ago to now. We have 8G RAM ,4G device swap, & 4G fs swap.

Help! This server is our production server & is a 24/7 box. I want to make sure I am on top of this & would like any explaination of the differences or suggestions to alleviate this issue.

Thanks a ton
18 REPLIES 18
Pete Randall
Outstanding Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Belynda,

I've never used FS swap so forgive me for sounding naive. I wouldn't think that you would see identifiable files in a swap area - what are the chances that something or someone is actually writing files to this area?


Pete

Pete
G. Vrijhoeven
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Hi,

When a proces starts it reserves a part of the swap space, just in case it needs to swap out. It does not mean it is used, it is reserved just in case. Your system has 8 GB mem and 8 Gb swap. I think if you expand your swap space you are out of trouble, but i would suggest doing it on an other lvol and not on the filesystem. If that is not possible (maxswapchunks to high) i am afraid it needs some down time....

HTH,

Gideon
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Can you post the message you got from the server?

Does not look to me like any swap is in use.

It might be possible the swap is not enabled, maybe you should check that.

/swap1 message by itself is not a problem because you have two swap areas.

I personally would change the priority settings.

I'd make the faster device swap priority zero(used first) and then this fs swap priority 1(used second).

This change may require a boot.

I'm lazy about swap and use sam to do these changes, since they happen here once every couple of years.

SEP
Steven E Protter
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Kent Ostby
Honored Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

What you're probably seeing is that the space is being RESERVED and hence it is used, even if it is not being actively swapped out to.

Best regards,
Kent M. Ostby
"Well, actually, she is a rocket scientist" -- Steve Martin in "Roxanne"
TWBSupport
Regular Advisor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

WOW! You guys are great! :o)

Pete -
As far as I know, there is no chance of someone else actually writing files there. It's owned by root alone & I are root. :o) The paging files are named servername.2280, servername.2281 all the way up to servername.4033. They are all aprox 2Mb of nothing. I ftp'd one to my workstation to open it up & they are all empty.

G -
So this is a major deal?? I have had so much trouble with the memory & SWAP on this system. We're running 9i & at first didn't have enough memory to make 9i happy, so I had to increase SWAP to alleviate that problem until we rec'd our memory, then I installed the extra memory & was told the 8G of SWAP for 8G of memory is more than enough. Now you're saying I should add MORE swap? Is there ever enough SWAP? :o)

Steven -
It's just an alert message that I send to root if any directories get over a certain %, here it is though... "The Minimum Free Space Threshold for the following filesystems
was exceeded."

tw053s01: Running out of space on /swap1. Currently 100%"

Swap is enabled, I checked that.

I was reading on another post that the priorities should be the same, now, as you can see I do have the priorities different. Your suggestion would be go with device over fs priority for quicker response. I'm not trying to question your help, I'm just trying to understand what is happening & how to fix it.
Patrick Wallek
Honored Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

What do you get if you do a:

# bdf /swap1/paging

TWBSupport
Regular Advisor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Patrick -
Here ya go...
bdf /swap1/paging
Filesystem kbytes used avail %used Mounted on
/dev/vg00/swap1 4194304 4192901 1323 100% /swap1
G. Vrijhoeven
Honored Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Hi,

I do not know if there is ever enough swap space ..... We have RP7410 running SAP with 10 GB memory and 20 GB swap for the first instance and 10 Gb for the next one (also Oralce). The swap space is hardly used but it is needed to keep SAP/Oralce happy.
So i am not sure. May be Oralce/SAP has some seagate/wd shares....

The priority settings for swap space work so if you have multiple disks with swap configured you want all the swap needed equaly devided over those disks so the same prio can be best. If you have multiple swap spaces on one disk / swap and fsswap you better put more prio on the ( lvol) swap device.

Regards!

Gideon


G. Vrijhoeven
Honored Contributor

Re: /swap1/paging full, but swapinfo -tm shows all free

Hi again.

The filesystem swap full does not mean swap is full. I would not worry if i was you.
Trust swapinfo -tam on this one.
To be sure check swap settings with glance.

Gideon