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RE: Do user processes apply against shmmax limit?

From: Richard Ji <richard.ji_at_mobilespring.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 15:53:54 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.0050A5C1.20021124155354@fatcity.com>


>if that SGA + user processes > shmmax the system will start swapping.

That's not true. If your SGA is bigger than shmmax, it just means the SGA will be fit into multiple shared memory segments. Doesn't necessary mean the system will start swapping. Is the scan rate going up?

Richard

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 1:49 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Hi everyone,

I was always under the impression that the only concern with shmmax was that it be large enough for the SGA to fit into it. One of my System Administrators has just told me that the individual user processes (i.e., the PGA since we're not using multi-threaded server) get added to the SGA and if that SGA + user processes > shmmax the system will start swapping.

I haven't found anything to specifically address this issue on Metalink so I though I'd throw it open. We've started experiencing system slowdown and he says that increasing shmmax could resolve it. I'm skeptical (he also suggested increasing SGA to decrease swapping which I told him in no uncertain terms was nonsense).

If anyone has a link to a note or white paper I'd appreciate that too.

I've appended his email at the bottom. This slowdown seems to occur even when there's virtually on oracle activity so I'm suspecting some other cause.

Thanks,
Jay Miller    

nycsun1 and njsun7 has 6 GB of memory and only 2 GB of share memory. This morning nycsun1 was very slow and I noticed that there was lots of swaping. see vmstst and iostat below in red:

procs memory page disk faults cpu  r b w swap free re mf pi po fr de sr s2 s4 s4 sd in sy cs us sy id
 0 0 23 4366736 97528 1 2186 16 12 12 95520 0 0 0 0 0 1104 3330 974 11 8 81
 0 0 23 4365992 96056 1 451 16 24 52 85968 3 0 0 0 0 935 847 416 3 1 96
 0 0 23 4364712 95512 2 310 36 24 492 85968 68 0 0 0 0 1036 2183 670 13 4 84
 0 0 23 4361568 95488 9 2264 0 76 964 95520 136 0 0 0 0 979 4065 607 12 6 82
 0 0 23 4362384 96080 1 6 4 8 8 77376 0 0 0 0 0 975 465 457 2 1 97
 0 0 23 4361944 95712 4 730 92 48 532 95520 64 0 0 0 0 1040 1859 734 8 3 89
 0 0 23 4360424 95480 4 41 36 40 100 77376 7 0 0 0 0 986 1250 542 6 0 94
 0 0 23 4361304 96096 3 264 76 36 88 88496 7 0 0 0 0 1037 942 665 5 3 92
 0 0 23 4359680 95784 2 449 4 28 84 95520 8 0 0 0 0 922 1047 374 4 1 95
 0 0 23 4359936 95464 2 544 4 20 332 95520 44 0 0 0 0 931 1095 384 2 2 96

/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device   0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 c2t6d0   0.0 34.5 0.0 270.0 0.2 13.8 6.7 399.5 6 44 c5t12d0 -- swap disk
  0.0 34.5 0.0 270.0 0.5 10.7 15.5 309.4 18 39 c5t13d0 -- swap disk

This shows that the system is not effectively using memory. I suggest increasing the share memory to 4 GB so that DBAs can increase their memory usage. Also set priority paging on. Priority paging will give application first priority then free memory will be allocated to file cache( Solaris 2.6 and 7. Solaris 8 is set dynamically).

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Miller, Jay
  INET: JayMiller_at_TDWaterhouse.com

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Received on Sun Nov 24 2002 - 17:53:54 CST

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