SUMMARY:shared memory problem

From: Jonny Todd (jtodd@eso.org)
Date: Wed Jun 09 1999 - 04:08:41 CDT

Jonny Todd wrote:

> Hello
>
> On some of our systems (Solaris 2.5.1 & 2.6) we get problems when
> attempting to allocate shared memory (like IE5) or some of our own
> applications fail to do so. From IE5 I get the error message:
>
> /usr/server/arc/lib/WWW/browser/microsoft/5.0/bin/iexplorer
> gma_init_shm->shmget1: No space left on device
> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>
> I think there is a kernel parameter which has to be adjusted.
>

Thank you for all the advice I got here which allowed me to quickly
rectify the problem.

There are four kernel parameters which allow you to alter the way shared
memory is allocated. these are

shmmax --> maximum size of shared memory segment
shmmin --> minimum size of share memory segment
shmseg --> maximum no of shared memory segments per process
shmmni --> no of shared memory identifiers available on system.

Solaris defaults shmmax to 1Mb which for many applications is not enough
(especially databases) so it can be increased by adding the following
line in the /etc/system file

set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = <value>

and rebooting. In this instance I upped the memory available to 50Mb (50
* 1024 * 1024) = 52428800 and everything worked OK.

There is a Info Doc (#6328) downloadable from sunsolve giving more
details.

Thanks to everyone that helped here. 

--
*********************************************************
Jonny Todd                      Email:  jtodd@eso.org
Unix System Administrator       Phone:  00 49 89 32006443
European Southern Observatory   Fax:    00 49 89 32006380

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