Xymon Mailing List Archive search

Important ! HP-UX and the memory utilisation

list Henrik Størner
Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:57:32 +0200
Message-Id: <user-13db188840dd@xymon.invalid>

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 02:46:07PM +0200, user-bb3e9041f07f@xymon.invalid wrote:
Thanks for your explanation ! I'm sorry to insist but it's a bit hard to understand. I think the true problem is the "reserved" memory. It's a maximum value and may not be used totally. For me, the real information is on the first line and given by the swapdisk. In my example, I got a total of 24G for swapping (also called paging by HP) and only 23% is used. 
Moreover, to determine the total physical memory used, a little script called "hpux_memory" is launched. I got very different results between this script and "swapinfo -Mm" :

bash-3.00$ ./hpux-meminfo Total:16372
Free:212

So, on my hobbit display I got percentage of memory utilisation > 95% whereas I got 29% with the other command !! Where is the truth ?!

bash-3.00$ /usr/sbin/swapinfo -Mm
            Mb         Mb         Mb        PCT
TYPE      AVAIL    USED    FREE  USED
memory  16372   4770     11602     29%
hpux-meminfo.c uses two HP library functions to get the memory
details: 
	pstat_getstatic(&sbuf, sizeof(sbuf), 1, 0);
This provides the amount of RAM installed, and appears to agree
with your "swapinfo -Mm" output (both say 16372).

	pstat_getdynamic(&dbuf, sizeof(dbuf), 1, 0);
This returns a "struct" (table of values) where the "psd_free" item is
described as "Physical pages that the system considers to be unused and available to processes". (I believe this is described in the
/usr/include/sys/pstat.h file). Through some calculations using the
pagesize value also returned by pstat_getstatic, it reaches the
value you get for MB free memory.

I'm not saying one or the other value is the "right" one, I don't have
enough knowledge of HP-UX to judge which one is right. If the HP-UX
knowledgable people around this list can let me know how to best determine the memory pressure, I'll be happy to re-do the HP-UX code
to work with that.

For the swap or paging memory, "swapinfo -dm" :
The Hobbit client uses "swapinfo -tm". According to the HP-UX manpage,
you only get a subset of the swap space information when using the "-d"
option, which results in a misleading total: 
    -t Add a totals line with a TYPE of total. This line totals only        the paging information displayed above it, not all paging areas;        this line might be misleading if a subset of -dfrM is specified
    -d Print information about device paging areas only.     -f Print information about file system paging areas only.
    -r Print information about reserved paging space only.
    -M Print information about memory paging space only.

(From http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90692/swapinfo.1M.html)


Regards,
Henrik