Memory error on HP-UX 11

[Commadore Peaster]

Hi all,

One of my K460, 11.00 box gave some problems this morning. It was sort of hung for users. I tried logging in , even from console and it cam eback saying:



GenericSysName [HP Release B.11.00] (see /etc/issue)
Console Login: root
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Call to mmap() failed - BSS /usr/lib/libnsl.1
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Not enough space

GenericSysName [HP Release B.11.00] (see /etc/issue)
Console Login:


To me it looked a memory problem . so after asking a few users to logout, I was able to get in. In glance it showed me memory and swap 100 % full. It stopped working glance also after some time for memory problem. In top I couldnt find any process using lot of memory or cpu.

My question is why this could have happened and how do you pinpoint to a process as culprit?

I ended up rebooting the box by the way.

Thanks for you imputs.

[Patrick Wessel]

This is not a hardwareproblem with your memory!

The error message you found indicates that the system is running out of process space trying to map shared library data into the BSS area. The most common solution to this error is to increase the swap.

[Commadore Peaster]

Thanks. But my swapinfo output is showing that there is ample space yet free on the swap device. Instead it is using memory fully as swap .


root@pcsdew:/:>swapinfo
Kb Kb Kb PCT START/ Kb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 1048576 142476 906100 14% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
reserve - 906100 -906100
memory 1565952 1526980 38972 98%


thanks again.

[Brian M. Fisher · Accepted solution]

call to mmap() failed - BSS /usr/lib/libnsl.1 ==> Patch

See document no.: KBRC00003021
http://us-support.external.hp.com/cki/bin/doc.pl/

It seems patch PHSS_21046 solves this specific issue.

Brian
<*(((>< er

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

Use swapinfo -ta or -tm, so as to see the total. The memory type can get to 100%, this does not mean that you can't usee your system. Patch it as Brian has suggested, and lets see the change.

Regards

[Alan Riggs]

Just to clarify:

root@pcsdew:/:>swapinfo
Kb Kb Kb PCT START/ Kb
TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 1048576 142476 906100 14% 0 - 1 /dev/vg00/lvol2
reserve - 906100 -906100
memory 1565952 1526980 38972 98%

This display shows that swap is fully allocated. You have (roughly) 1GB of disk swap available. 140MB is being actively used for paging. The remaining 900MB is in reserve -- that means the kernel has set the space aside to page processes already running if necessary. The memory line indicates that 98% of available memory swap (which is generally about 75% of physical memory) is in use.

If the patch does not solve your problem (I presume by correcting for improper allocation of swap space), then I would try adding more disk swap. Actually, even if the patch does solve your immediate problem you might want to investigate more disk swap if those swapinfo numbers do not drop sharply.

[Commadore Peaster]

Thank you all of you. I will try and see with this patch.

However , I still have one unanswered question. How do I find out which process is the memory hog. I could not find it in top or glance.

Thanks

[Alan Riggs]

Well, two ways come to mind. If your system can use the XPG4 ps environment then you can specify the resident size and virtual set size with:
ps -e -o "user,pid,ppid,sz,vsz"
(does anyone else miss the ability to use things like "ps gv"?)

If not, then you can use glance/gpm. Loathe as I am to admit it, the GUI is actually better in this case. In gpm, go to
reports->process list-> configure->sort fields
Then select the fields Resident Memory and Virtual memory to sort by resident set size or virtual memory size as desired.

[Alan Riggs]

Forgot to mention, if you aren't famiar with the XPG4 behavior of ps, you invoke it be setting the UNIX95 environmental variable to 1. I also forgot to include "comm" in the list of columns; you probably want it. man ps has a full list and also explains where the XPG4 behavior differs from standard HP-UX ps.

ex:
export UNIX95=1;ps -e -o "user,pid,ppid,sz,vsz,comm" | sort -rn +4|more