Re: Oracle process consumes all paging space on AIX

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.databases.oracle.server/msg/a41a345529ee853b?dmode=source

Perhaps someone was being "funny" with your glogin.sql?

This is why some recommend setting swap to more than memory. Things will slow down before totally dying so you _can_ kill the problem session. I don't know about your version of AIX, but many modern unix allow setting up secondary swap in a filesystem.

Also, unable to fork may be due to simply hitting the process limit in your kernel. Remember, some kernel settings are additive when you have multiple instances.

Speculation: process unable to fork, uses some memory trying to retry, still unable to fork, uses more memory trying it again, repeat until explode.

>From some ibm doc a google search found:

 HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF YOU NEED MORE PAGING SPACE?

       o   If any of the following messages appear on the console
           or in response to a command on any terminal:




               "INIT: Paging space is low"





               "ksh: cannot fork no swap space"





               "Not enough memory"





               "Fork function failed"





               "fork () system call failed"





               "Unable to fork, too many processes"





               "Fork failure - not enough memory available"





               "Fork function not allowed.  Not enough memory

               available."




               "Cannot fork: Not enough space"

jg

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