Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!shamash!nic.MR.NET!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Help!  Altos 5.3.1 fork is failing!
Message-ID: <1989Oct20.021928.2452@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 20 Oct 89 02:19:28 GMT
References: <506@oglvee.UUCP> <4219@cuuxb.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.unix.i386
Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 39

As quoted from <4219@cuuxb.ATT.COM> by dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh):
+---------------
| Ordinarily I don't answer questions like this as I work for
| support and customers pay money for answers, but .... this is a
| System V error and generally true for all System V 3.xxx
| machines.
+---------------

I hope the answers you give paying customers are a bit more on the mark.
(Disclaimer:  I'm in this business too.  And I'm familiar with Altos's OS,
which you apparently aren't.)

+---------------
|         jacked up PBUF to 16 -- but it made no difference.
| 
| Sorry, wrong guess.  Try /etc/swap -a ......
+---------------

Sorry, wrong guess.  I have repeated this bug with /etc/swap -l showing 100
out of 25000 swap blocks in use.  Somehow, that doesn't look like "out of
swap" to me.

The point is that Altos 5.3.1 (and, as it turns out, AT&T System V Release
3.1) has a stupid bug that makes the kernel not want to page stuff out when a
fork() comes up with insufficient free memory in core.  I claimed this to
Altos a year ago, I now have confirmation.

PLEASE check your facts before posting, I at least had the sense to pull out
every tool I possess, from sar to /etc/swap -l to sysmon to some custom
jobs I whipped up (years of practice babysitting a SVR2 system) before
claiming a kernel problem.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc	     allbery@NCoast.ORG
uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu bsa@telotech.uucp
161-7070 (MCI), ALLBERY (Delphi), B.ALLBERY (GEnie), comp-sources-misc@backbone
[comp.sources.misc-related mail should go ONLY to comp-sources-misc@<backbone>]
*Third party vote-collection service: send mail to allbery@uunet.uu.net (ONLY)*