SMP KERNEL

[Nobody's Hero]

Hi All,

I have set up a test box for oracle9i. I am running RedHat9 on an HP E800 512 Mbytes of Memory dual processor system running 2.4.20-27.9smp. I installed Oracle just fine and the dual processors are running good. Here is my problem. I shut oracle down so I just have system processes running. I wanted to try to push the processors. So I open 3 windows. On one window I do a find on a file that does not exist so it will search a while. On the other two windows I run 'ls -lR /'. While this is going on, I watch 'top'. When I start, I have 321776 free and 191000 used. As the 3 windows do their thing, I can see free memory go all the way slowly down to 6 or 8k, then the box reboots. Has anyone seen this before? Is it because of the kernel parms I changed for oracle or do you think I need a patch or something? Any help is appreciated.

10x
RPM

[Steven E. Protter]

This sounds like a classic memory leak.

I've run similar tests on non-oracle redhat 7 and 9 boxes and not found this behavior.

I am current on all red hat patches in this case.

What this looks liek to me is an oracle problem. I would make sure that the latest oracle patch for your version of the database is installed and then re-run the test.

The fact that oracle is no longer running does not mean that oracle has not messed up your system.

Have you done any kernel modifications to run oracle? there are a few needed in the documentation. If they are not done the system or database can be unstable.

I know this is not much, but its a starting point.

You can't run Oracle or red hat anymore without being heavily patched.

SEP

[Nobody's Hero]

Thanks Steven, I have made the suggested kern mods. My feeling is I need to be patched. I have not installed any. Do you have a site I can go to and get these patches? Maybe this will help plug the hole.

[Olivier Drouin]

Your tests will "push" the disks, not the cpu.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Using redhats up2date feature, fully patch the OS. The kernel is fine, you have a nice stable one.

Then go to http://metalink.oracle.com or http://otn.oracle.com or http://technet.oracle.com and see if you can find patches for your oracle database software.

There are several major patches for Oracle 9i Database server on all platforms.

If you have trouble finding the patches, you may need a support agreement to get the patches, though I don't know this for a fact.

Sorry about the delay, I've been getting ready for weekend maintenance.

SEP

[Huc_1]

A little late, but perhaps this could be usefull on Redhat 9 i found a tool named

/usr/bin/memprof

I try this on a few executables, seems worth it.

And this will test, look for memory leaks.

J-P