swapinfo memory line

[gnaid]

I'm a little confused on the swapinfos memory line
According to swapinfo man page:
...
memory Memory paging area (also known as pseudo-swap).
This is the amount of system memory that can be
used to hold pages in the event that all of the
above paging areas are used up. See "Paging
Allocation" below. This line appears only if
memory paging is enabled.
...


BUT on my system:
# model
ia64 hp server rx2620
# uname -a
HP-UX hpsrv3 B.11.31 U ia64

# dmesg | grep Physical
Physical: 2085612 Kbytes, lockable: 1339168 Kbytes, available: 1507160 Kbytes

# swapinfo -tm
swapinfo -t
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
reserve - 302004 -302004
memory 1984012 552236 1431776 28%
total 6178316 854240 5324076 14% - 0 -


AVAILABLE MEMORY is 1507160 Kbytes and the size of pseudo-swap should be set at 7/8 of the Available memory at system startup time,which is definitely not 1984012.

On the other hand HP-UX CSE Official Study Guide and Desk Reference, ISBN : 0-13-146396-9 says "The memory line lists the amount of pseudo-swap configured. Also note that the usage on the memory line includes usage by other kernel subsystems and not just pseudo-swap." (9.3 Configuring Additional Swap Devices
)

Which is right?!

[Dennis Handly]

>swapinfo -t

(I would suggest you always use -tam because K is just too small a unit.)

>AVAILABLE MEMORY is 1507160 Kbytes and the size of pseudo-swap should be set at 7/8 of the Available memory

I think available memory for swapinfo is total memory. But that still gives 95% of your 2 Gb.

I would suggest you shouldn't worry about the value of the avail memory line of swapinfo. What you get is what it is.

swapinfo(1m) says:
For the memory paging area this value is also not necessarily constant, because it reflects allocation of memory by the kernel as well as by processes that might need to be paged.

[gnaid]

10x Dennis,
I don't worry about the value, just wondering...

swapinfo(1m) is too old(and may be there are some errors). For example:

"2.

If all file system paging areas are completely allocated and the request is still not satisfied, the system will try to use memory paging as described on the memory line above. (Memory paging is controlled by the tunable parameter swapmem_on, which defaults to 1 (on). If this parameter is turned off, the memory line will not appear.)"

- This is HP-UX v3 and swapmem_on is not tunnable.
- My device/file system paging areas are not allocated at all, but the system uses memory paging?!(according to my memory line above).

It's look like the memory line is completely useless, and I really don't know how to interpret it( as far as I don't have the source).

and what is worse I haven't info about the pseudo-swap

[Dennis Handly]

>It looks like the memory line is completely useless

No, it tells you how much is used and how much is free.

[gnaid~]

ok,

total(avail) = dev(avail) + memory(avail)

=> memory is the pseudo-swap (it is a part of the total swap )

I still don't know how the size of pseudo-swap is calculated.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Memory to HP-UX is ram plus swap.

SEP

[gnaid~]

> => memory is the pseudo-swap (it is a part of the total swap )

I mean the swapinfo's "memory line" ;)

[Don Morris_1]

v3 does not use the 7/8ths calculation -- it calculates maximum swap mem using a heuristic instead. (The default is roughly 90% of total physical memory available at the time of setting up User process reservation space.).

Frankly -- your numbers make no sense as given. Your memory line is 95% of total physical, not available. Possible, but highly unlikely without tweaking the heuristic -- which isn't something that is/should be done externally. When you add in that the available memory was only 1507160 kB, however -- it makes even less sense.

So -- given all that, I'm suspicious as to if you've done a Memory OLA operation. [This is part of why dmesg is *not* a reliable way to get your physical memory].

First, compile and run the attached program so we can see where the system is at now. If the reported physical memory is higher than your dmesg, you know you had Memory OLA. To find out when, I'd probably do:

evmget -A -t "@timestamp @@"

but then again, I'm not terribly perfect with awk and friends so I know I generate a bunch of data to slog through some times.
An alternate approach is to check the syslog for a Memory Class line after boot (VM will issue one on every Memory OL* success such that the updated Physical/Lockable/Swapmem totals are known for each Memory Class [System as a whole, Kernel Only, User Only]).

[gnaid~]

10x Don,
no Memory OLA (btw, rx2620 is a low entry server and don't support OL* functionality )

[root@hpsrv3 /]# dmesg | grep Physical
Physical: 2085612 Kbytes, lockable: 1339168 Kbytes, available: 1507160 Kbytes

[root@hpsrv3 /]# ./335520 (your script!)
Memory Stat total used avail %used
physical 2036.7 994.6 1042.1 49%
active virtual 483.1 321.1 161.9 66%
active real 248.1 156.2 92.0 63%
memory swap 1937.5 539.4 1398.1 28%
device swap 4096.0 297.6 3798.4 7%
Activations: 0 total, 0 rate. Deactivations: 0 total, 0 rate.
Reclaims from Swap: 0 total (Up 0), 0 rate.

[root@hpsrv3 /]# swapinfo -tm
Mb Mb Mb PCT START/ Mb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 4096 0 4096 0% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
reserve - 299 -299
memory 1938 540 1398 28%
total 6034 839 5195 14% - 0 -



This is another rx2620 machine (both are real systems with the same hp-ux v3, not VM) :
dmesg | grep Physical
Physical: 2085612 Kbytes, lockable: 1325676 Kbytes, available: 1500560 Kbytes
[root@hpsrv4 /]# swapinfo -tm
Mb Mb Mb PCT START/ Mb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 2048 0 2048 0% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
reserve - 414 -414
memory 1938 585 1353 30%
total 3986 999 2987 25% - 0 -

[gnaid~]

Memory class line after boot:
(/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log)

Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: Memory Class Setup
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: Class Physmem Lockmem Swapmem
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix:
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 above message repeats 2 times
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: System : 1937 MB 1937 MB 1937 MB
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: Kernel : 1937 MB 1937 MB 1937 MB
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: User : 1484 MB 1315 MB 1320 MB

and memory info:
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: Memory Information:
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: physical page size = 4096 bytes, logical page size = 4096 bytes
Jun 3 17:43:50 hpsrv3 vmunix: Physical: 2085612 Kbytes, lockable: 1339168 Kbytes, available: 1507160 Kbytes