High Swap and Memory Usage

rickylim · 05-03-2006, 08:55 PM

Dear all,

hi, i am newbie to solaris.

i have one server solaris 5.9.

The problem is, right after i execute tar command for backup, the swap and memory usage shoot up to 90% ++. (since yesterday until today)

even after my tar command completed.

i've check prstat -a but could not find any high processes.

Please advice.

Many Thanks.

rgds
Lim

jlliagre · 05-04-2006, 12:59 AM

Is your backup destination located on the /tmp directory ?

rickylim · 05-04-2006, 03:08 AM

Thanks for ur reply

yes, i have tar backup the file to destination /tmp

please advice.

Thanks

rgds.
lim

jlliagre · 05-04-2006, 05:53 AM

By default on Solaris, /tmp is of type tmpfs.

tmpfs is a filesystem backed by virtual memory (similar to a RAM-disk).

By creating your archive file on /tmp, you actually exhausted your RAM pages and the system stored the remaining on the swap area.

You can easily recover this memory by moving your archive to /var/tmp, which is stored on a disk based filesystem.

rickylim · 05-04-2006, 08:56 PM

Dear jlliagre,

i've got it solved, thanks for ur time and advice.

Many thanks

rgds.
Lim