How can I get system table`s contents without Glance +

[Lothar Krueler]

Hi,
I want to bring an application from a D270 to a L2000 cluster. For setting up the kernelparms I need the current values the application uses. I do not have glance on the D270 - the trial version has expired long ago.
How can I get information about the system tables by using shell commands ?
From our D270 HP-UX 10.20 I need the currently used values for :
"nproc, nfile, shgmmni, msgmni, semmni, nflocks, nbuf, ninode, buffercache"

Thanks in advance - Lothar

[Stefan Farrelly]

use the command;

/usr/sbin/sysdef

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

your current values can be found in the file /stand/system

its a plain ascii text file! You can also view it from within SAM -> Kernel/Configurable parameters

[Lothar Krueler]

Hi Stefan,
thanks for your very fast asnwer, I tried , but the listed values seem to be the configured kernel parm. I need the values currently used, like gance would show in the system tables.
Lothar

[Stefan Farrelly]

OK, go ahead and make your question really tough :-)!

Right, sar -v 1 1 will give you current usage values for;
ninode (inod-sz)
nfile (file-sz)
nproc (proc-sz)

bufpages is statically set, no such thing as its usage, unless it has actually been forced lower than shown in sysdef - so use the sysdef value

The rest...let me think about how to get the rest from the running kernel using adb...

[Stefan Farrelly]

Now, for semmni, this is real tough becuase Im sure glance actually goes into the kernel structures/tables and totals up the number in use, which is difficult for us to replicate from the command line, however ive worked out a way to get a rough figure;

You need to see the value of semmni from the kernel, but its doesnt show in sysdef, and if you dont have it hardset in your /stand/system file then you can get it from;
strings /stand/vmunix | grep semmni
Lets say its 256. Multiply by 8 (my guess) gives you 2048. Now we need to use the ipcs -sa command to total up your current semaphore usage, eg;

let X=0
for i in `ipcs -sa | awk '{print $9}' | grep -v NSEMS`
do
let X=$X+$i
done
echo $X

On my systems this results in 305 semaphores used, which when worked out as a percentage of 2048 is 14%, glance reports 11%. Tried it on several other systems, %result is always within a few % points of glance so not too bad!

more after lunch........pub time

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

Hi Lothar,

You can get (nproc, nfile,ninode) values from sar -v 1 1 and the rest from this line command: echo "bufpages/D" |adb /stand/vmunix /dev/mem. Just substitute bufpages with any other.

[Stefan Farrelly]

Next, I think msgmni is even easier. To see what the current kernel value is hardset to do;
strings /stand/vmunix | grep msgmni

On ours its set to 150. Doing an ipcs -qa command shows the number of queues, which in all cases Ive looked at on our servers = the number in use from glance. eg. ipcs -qa shows 2 entries, gpm reports msgmni of 150 and only 2 in use (1%).

From sysdef, bufpages is in 4k pages so multiply by 4 = amount of memory used by Buffer cache. eg bufpages = 104857, x4, / 1024 = 409.6 Mb, same as gpm reports.
nbuf is simply buffer headers, no need to set this value, just set dbc_max_pct and dbc_min_pct to your desired values and bufpages and nbuf will be set automatically by the kernel. eg. on ours we have 2Gb RAM, we have dbc_max_pct set to 20, dbc_min_pct set to 10 (from sysdef) this has thus automatically set bufpages to 409.6 MB (as per above) and nbuf to 89530. All 409.6 MB is used for caching, usage=100%.

[Lothar Krueler]

Hi there,
thank you all for your previous suggestions. Please take a look at the attached, not yet completed shell-script.
I`m still searching the currently used values for nflocks and shmmni.

Lothar :-)

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

For shmmni do the same as for Semaphores above. You can see the value of shmmni either from sysdef or echo semmni/D | adb /stand/vmunix /dev/jmem
and then use ipcs -? (forget option to show shared mem usage) one column shows how much sharedmem is use, use a script to total it, compare to shmmni and theres your answer. I think nflocks is always 100% used (cant remember, not at work) so simply see the value from sysdef or using adb as per above.

[Lothar Krueler]

Hi,
Stefan, there is a different between configured nflocks and used nflocks, I found
a script for getting the currently used nflocksvalue :
"http://my1.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x3bb9119c3420d411b66300108302854d,00.html"
I tried on our D270 HPUX 10.20 - it works (after adding a / before of q4xpdb), but i couldn`t verify the value, because I don`t have glance on the D270.
Using your last response I?m ready with my script (attached to this post).

Thank you all for your help.
Lothar :-))