RE: Strange system crash?

Just for clarification, when you say system crashing I assume you mean the whole operating system goes away... Is that correct? Will >===== Original Message From Ross Berman <rdberman@yahoo.com> ===== >Over the past few weeks we have had two Sun 450's running Informix >9.20.UC2 when suddenly the system crashes and no error messages show up >in the Informix or system logs (and I'm logging EVERYTHING). There >isn't even a core dump. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced >a problem like this. > >The problem has occurred on both servers (which are identical) at random >times, sometimes when the database is working hard, sometimes when it's >idle (but oninit is running.) The systems have run for nearly a week at >a time without crashing but sometimes they'll crash three times in a >day... > >The Sun 450 is running with a fresh install of Solaris 7, the most >current patch cluster is installed, I made the recommended kernel >changes, and these servers aren't running anything but the OS and >Informix. Each has 1GB of RAM and 2 processors. > >One thing I noticed but haven't found good documentation on, is that the >Informix resident shared memory size was close to 700,000kbytes which >exceeds the kernel shmmax parameter. I have since changed the shmmax >kernel parameter from the default recommended value of 268435456 to >805306368 and the systems didn't crash for over a week. The change >appears to have fixed the problem, but I'm not sure. Does the kernel >shmmax parameter have to be larger than the resident shared memory >size? If it isn't, would that really cause the system to crash without >warning? > >Ross > >rdberman@yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This e-mail has been sent to you courtesy of OperaMail, as a free service from Opera Software, makers of the award-winning Web Browser, Opera. Visit us at http://www.opera.com/ or our portal at: http://www.myopera.com/ Your free e-mail account is waiting at: http://www.operamail.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, the entire machine halts and I'm brought to the boot ok> prompt. I've even monitored the console, I had it constantly pinging itself and half of a ping message was cut off and the next line said: ok> I've had extensive diagnostics run on the hardware by two Sun Engineers and nothing came up... Ross rdberman@yahoo.com William Rice wrote: > Just for clarification, when you say system crashing I assume > you mean the whole operating system goes away... > Is that correct? > > Will > >===== Original Message From Ross Berman <rdberman@yahoo.com> ===== > >Over the past few weeks we have had two Sun 450's running Informix > >9.20.UC2 when suddenly the system crashes and no error messages show up > >in the Informix or system logs (and I'm logging EVERYTHING). There > >isn't even a core dump. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced > >a problem like this. > > > >The problem has occurred on both servers (which are identical) at random > >times, sometimes when the database is working hard, sometimes when it's > >idle (but oninit is running.) The systems have run for nearly a week at > >a time without crashing but sometimes they'll crash three times in a > >day... > > > >The Sun 450 is running with a fresh install of Solaris 7, the most > >current patch cluster is installed, I made the recommended kernel > >changes, and these servers aren't running anything but the OS and > >Informix. Each has 1GB of RAM and 2 processors. > > > >One thing I noticed but haven't found good documentation on, is that the > >Informix resident shared memory size was close to 700,000kbytes which > >exceeds the kernel shmmax parameter. I have since changed the shmmax > >kernel parameter from the default recommended value of 268435456 to > >805306368 and the systems didn't crash for over a week. The change > >appears to have fixed the problem, but I'm not sure. Does the kernel > >shmmax parameter have to be larger than the resident shared memory > >size? If it isn't, would that really cause the system to crash without > >warning? > > > >Ross > > > >rdberman@yahoo.com > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > This e-mail has been sent to you courtesy of OperaMail, as a free service from > Opera Software, makers of the award-winning Web Browser, Opera. Visit us at > http://www.opera.com/ or our portal at: http://www.myopera.com/ Your free e-mail > account is waiting at: http://www.operamail.com/ > ------------------------------------------------------------