Swapping and Paging Messages

Swapping is similar to paging, except that entire processes are swapped out, instead of individual memory pages, as in paging. The system maintains a section of hard disk for swapping. If this space is filled, no further programs can be swapped out, and thus no further programs can be created.

The following messages may indicate a swapping or paging problem:

• Swap out failed on logical swap

  For some reason, the operating system was unable to write the program to the swap portion of the disk. No action is necessary as the process is still in memory. See "Swap Space".

• Paging Daemon (vhand) not running - NFS server down?

  The system determines that vhand is not executing, possibly because it is waiting for an I/O transfer to complete to an NFS server (especially if the NFS file system is hand mounted). No action should be necessary as the system will restart vhand when needed.

• bad page in process (vfault)

  The page being faulted into memory is not a recognized type. The recognized types are demand fill, demand zero, in file, or on swap. Reboot your system and if the error persists, check your application and your disk.

• unix: WARNING: Process ... killed due to bad page read

  The page being faulted into memory could not be read for some reason and the process was killed. Restart the program or reboot the system, and if the error persists, check your application and your disk.

• unix: Process ... killed due to insufficient memory/swap

  Your system uses a combination of physical memory (RAM) and a small portion of the disk (swap space) to run applications. Your system does not have enough memory and swap space at this time. It had to stop a program from running to free up some memory.

• unix: ... out of logical swap space during fork - see swap(1M)

  Your system does not have enough memory and swap space at this time. It could not start a new process.

1. Exit from applications when you are not using them. Remember to check all your Desks.

2. Order additional memory from your local support or sales organization.

3. Turn on virtual swap space. Refer to the swap(1M) reference page and "Swap Space" first.

   The Administrator should log in as root and enter the command:

   chkconfig

   If the chkconfig listing shows a line that says vswap off, give the commands:

   chkconfig vswap on

   /etc/init.d/swap start

   If vswap was already on, go on to the next step.

4. Create a file that the system can use for additional swap space. Note that this decreases your available disk space by the size of the file. If you create a 10 MB swap file, you'll no longer have access to that 10MB of disk space.

   To create a 10 MB swap file, the Administrator should log in as root and enter these commands:

   mkdir -p /var/swap

   /usr/sbin/mkfile 10m /var/swap/swap1

   /sbin/swap -a /var/swap/swap1

   To make this permanent, so you have the swap space available every time you restart the system, add this line to the /etc/fstab file:

   /var/swap/swap1 swap swap pri=3

   For more information, see the swap(1M) reference page or "Swap Space".

5. You can permanently increase swap space by repartitioning the disk. You can find instructions to do this in the IRIX Admin: Disks and Filesystems volume.