Memory full on HP UX 11 server

[SpiritOfLennon]

Hi,
We have a problem with a hp9000 server running HPUX 11.00. The memory is filling up and we have memory that has not been released by the operating system. Is there any way to release this memory without carrying out a reboot?
SOL SOL
I'm only guessing but my guess work generally works for me.

 

[mainframer]

We also have a HP 9000 running 11.0. I have noticed the same situation on our machine. The machine was up for 7 months and the memory had reached 98% and paging was 60.
After a boot for security patches, with similar workloads as before, memory utilization is 65% and paging 17%. After running now a couple of weeks, memory is at 72% and paging at 29%. We run several instances of oracle.

 

[unixqueen]

Hi,

These are the areas that I would start to look at

1) Always most importantly - be up to date on patching, choose quarterly Quality pack - these are updated September and March.
2) Identify if application is memory leaking - raise a call with your application vendor and make sure that your application is patched
3) What model of machine are you running, how much physical memory is installed and how much swap is configured - is it device/filesystem swap.
The reason that you need to be looking at swap usage is that your kernel parameters might be set too low so that your machine cannot use all its memory and is therefore paging.
So look at swapinfo output, approx 75% of memory should be used before you start paging.
Ask your application vendor to identify what your kernel parameters should be set to run their application properly.

Good luck
Clare

 

[AlfredB]

1. Not sure what you mean by memory not being released by the operating system. Memory is requested from the operating system and owned by the process until it is no longer running. Perhaps, you have a process that can be stopped and re-started.

2. If memory is filling up too quickly, perhaps your memory requirements are greater than anticipated.

3. Perhaps, you have a memory leak.

The solution: discover what is normal for you system and run periodic checks on memory usage. If you have a long running process, stop and re-start the process occasionally.

Alfred