SWAPPER issue

[Willem Grooters]

Additional to Robert's entry:
T4 is noting more than a few exectablesa dn command procedures. The most important two in your case would be the image that ttransforms regular binary MONITOR output into a comma-separated file, that can be copied to a PC and fed into whatever program you like; the second program is the Windows-based viewer name tlViz.

The translation image could well run on VMS 7.1

[John Gillings]

John,

This symptom can result from an "Idle Process Killer" (IPK) type process under some conditions. If you fill your balance set slots, any excess processes must (by definition) be swapped out. If the way your IPK samples processes involves an inswap it will force another process to be swapped out. The IPK will therefore "chase" the outswapped processes through the process list. On each IPK system scan, every process will be swapped in and probably back out. If the time for swapper to do all those swaps exceeds your IPK scan interval, you'll see SWAPPER constantly dominating the CPU.

Three ways out
1) increase balance set
2) reduce the number of processes
3) (my preference) get rid of the IPK or get one that's a bit more intelligent.

(by "more intelligent" I mean one that won't inswap a process to sample, BUT realise that means the IPK won't touch an outswapped process, but guess what? idle processes are more likely to be outswapped, so it kind of defeats the purpose!)