Conference abbott::mailworks-unix

1382.0. "Not enough memory" by TAMARA::NEUMAN::Neumann (Stan Neumann) Fri May 23 1997 15:03

We recently realized that by default, Digital UNIX is
configured so that the per-process data size is set to
128 Megabytes.  If this parameter is left at the default
value, and if a process grows much past 128 Megabytes, it
can begin to have problems allocating memory.  This in
turn can be reported with a variety of errors in the log
files (including "can't create thread", which may not be
obvious).

So, if your customer is having memory or threads errors appear in
the log files:

1) Watch the size of the MailWorks processes (the important 
   size is the virtual size (the VSZ column in the ps auxw output).
   If any of them are approaching 128 Megabytes by the end of the
   day (or week), then check the kernel tuning parameters.

2) Check the per process data size: execute the command
   /sbin/sysconfig -q proc
   In the display the follows, locate the entry for 
   per-proc-data-size.  If it is 134217728, this is the default
   (128 M) and you should increase it to 1073741824 (1 gigabyte).

See note 1310.1 for instructions on modifying this parameter.
(Although that note was written for a much larger system, so
unless your processes are getting very large, you do not need to
set the parameter to *2* gigabytes.)

-Stan