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Originally Posted by
butchie3980
the idea is to trigger swap usage, and we try to monitor that two ways, using top and "swap -l"
first step that we try is to fill up /tmp with a couple of simple "mkfile 10g /tmp/memeater01" style commands. We can see the available ram decrease each time we create one of those files in /tmp.
we get down to about 10-ish GB of free ram and start to encounter "no space available" errors when trying to create tmp files.
You have exhausted your virtual memory, which includes most of the RAM plus all of the swap area when you get these messages. Can you post the actual numbers and the commands you use to measure memory and swap usage ?
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Next think we tried was to push it over the edge using a program that simply uses malloc() calls to reserve ram and hold onto it. we can also watch the avalable ram decrease until the 10GB (roughly) threshold and then this program dies.
How (why) does it die ?
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A combination of both /tmp files and the malloc() program still dies around the 10gb free threshold and we never ever see any indicators that swap space is being used.
Are you you actually accessing all of the the allocated pages ?
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Just downloaded VTS, and started reading the documentation. Tried a test run, but don't know if the defaults are what we need. We only enabled the memory test and ran it. According to top, free RAM dropped to 36GB and stayed there, Free swap stayed the same no changes. We sat there and watched top for about 30 minutes before getting pulled away to a meeting. so we stopped it and decided to try later. are there some parameters we need to set or change?
VTS is to stress test you hardware in order to detect faulty components. I don't think this is what you are looking for, although I don't precisely understand what exactly you are trying to achieve/fix ...