Sys V/386/3.2 UNIX system getting hung (?)

[Mike Borza]

In article <228 at cs-col.Columbia.NCR.COM> vause at cs-col.Columbia.NCR.COM (Sam Vause) writes:
>In article <6226 at homxc.ATT.COM> mrb1 at homxc.ATT.COM (M.BAKER) writes:
>>	We have an AT&T 6386E system running UNIX SysV/3.2.
>>	While running our application, it has been observed to
>>	'hang'.  Specifically, the application stops in the
>>       [more info about hangs deleted...]
>
>Well, it's possible that the clist increment mentioned later
>in the original posting is actually *hurting* the situation, rather
>than helping.
>
>My experience indicates that this symptom is possibly from a variety
>of situations, but personal observation leads me to believe that the
>kernel logical address space is being exhausted.
>
This also concurs with my experience.  Our 386 with 4 MB of memory
is used to develop X-Windows applications under ISC 386/ix (1.0.6).
Based on analysis of sar output, we decided to increase, among
other things, the number of disk buffes..  Under unpredictable
circumstances, the system would slow to a crawl, sometimes dying and
sometimes recovering without any intervention.  At other times, the
system would just die, sometimes echoing characters typed at the
console and serial terminals, sometimes not.  Reducing the amount of
space allocated to some of the bigger kernel resources always restored
reliable functionality for our application mix.  Prior to acquiring X,
we were able to use substantially more disk buffers before
encountering this problem.  Most interesting (and annoying).
 
>Perhaps this is not your actual situation, but it sure sounds *PAINFULLY*
>similar to situations that I've recently encountered....
 
Sure does. Thanks.
 
>|Sam Vause, NCR Corporation, Customer Services - TOWER Support	   |

Mike Borza              <antel!mike at maccs.uucp>
Antel Optronics Inc.