Re: kernel memory keeps increasing and running out of memory (Sun T4, Solaris 10)
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:01:25 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <1363147285.71977.YahooMailClassic_at_web184806.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
I used to browse the comp.os.solaris newsgroup. Just checked. It's still active (less so than before though), and relatively spam-free. You can access it through its web interface https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/comp.unix.solaris Nowadays, there're many Solaris forums. But the few extremely knowledgeable folks are still in the newsgroup. But the problem should really be handled by the system admin. They should open a ticket with Sun and get help identify the kernel memory leak. mdb has the ::findleaks command. To do that to the kernel, you may need to boot with debug enabled. I don't think there's a way to manually release some kernel memory unless a kernel module is unloaded (if it can). But first let's identify what code leaks memory. If it's from a vendor's driver, show the leaking function to the vendor.
Yong Huang
- On Tue, 3/12/13, Eagle Fan <eagle.f_at_gmail.com> wrote:
From: Eagle Fan <eagle.f_at_gmail.com>
Subject: Re: kernel memory keeps increasing and running out of memory (Sun T4, Solaris 10)
To: "Yong Huang" <yong321_at_yahoo.com>
Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2013, 10:17 PM
Thank you Yong. It matches our observation. When we had high NIC usage, we saw big increase in kernel memory.
The problem is the kernel memory doesn't release after the NIC usage is back to normal. We had several times disk scan.
Do you know any way we can release the Stream buffer manually?
For Solaris forum, do you have any recommendation:)
On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 2:46 AM, Yong Huang <yong321_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> Server is Sun T4 (2 CPU, 128G memory), solaris version is "Oracle
> Solaris 10 8/11 s10s_u10wos_17b SPARC"
...
> Does anybody know what streams_dblk is used for? I tried to google for
> it but didn't get any useful information.
This question may be better answered on a Solaris forum. STREAMS is the underlined technology at the driver layer implementing Solaris network stack, such as TCP/IP or even layer 2. I can only guess your problem may be related to network connections on this server. But even under stress, kernel memory should not leak, or it's likely to be a bug in Solaris.
Yong Huang
-- Eagle Fan (www.dbafan.com) -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Wed Mar 13 2013 - 05:01:25 CET