SCO 5.0.5 and Fork failed msg 4

[jasboy]

Hi,

I'm a fairly new at Unix and could use some help.

Our Sco box has library software on it (Unicorn) that keeps all our patron info, all the books and movies etc on it. Basically, it's our life blood at our library. About a week ago we started getting this message:

Fork Failed: Command (mail)
Possibly running out of swap
Use /etc/swap to add or list
available space

System error was: Resource temporarily unavailable

After running /etc/swap -l I get this:

/dev/swap dev swaplo blocks free
1,41 0 409600 409600

This system has run for the most part error free since May of 2000.

I have SMTP turned off (due to relay problems a while ago), but still use POP to email daily reports to 4 people.

I guess it could be just what it says and I need to add more swap space (although I'm not 100% sure how to it safely?). Or maybe sectors have gone out of the hard drive? Is there a scandisk like tool for SCO?

Thanks for any help

Jasboy

 

[stanhubble]

Here are some suggestions for tuning:

For disk performance... it will use a bit of memory but it's worth it:

NHBUF 65536
MAXBUF 32768
NBUF 32768
NINODE 400
NFILE 400

For user processes... which should correct the fork failed messages :
NPROC 200 ... 400
MAXUP 100 ... 150


You can modify/add these in the stune file then relink the kernel and reboot. Most documentation on tuning tends to be dated and hasn't kept up with the performance/resources of current systems.