[ILUG] Spooky dissappearence of swap space on solaris

[Conor Daly]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 02:10:32PM +0100 or thereabouts, Paul Jakma wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Conor Daly wrote:
> 
> > Questions are:
> > Why is the partition *size* changing rather than the useage?
> > How come the "swap" filesystem/partition is mounted on /tmp?
> > Is there some dynamic "sharing" of /tmp filesystem and swap space going on?
> > HTF do sun partitioning schemes work anyhow?
> 
> /tmp on solaris is usually a 'tmpfs'. A filesystem with no device,
> just virtual memory backing it up.
> 
> Ie filling up /tmp fills memory, not a disk.
> 
> linux just acquired a tmpfs, and it has a 'limit' mount option, to
> prevent things like /tmp eating too much memory. solaris doesn't seem
> to have a similar option (looking at the sol2.7 man page for tmpfs).
> 
> so either live with it, and watch your tmpfs usage, or else put /tmp
> on real disk backed storage if you can't afford that kind of risk.
> 
> > Conor
> 
> --paulj

Thanks all for the info.  I'm going to closet the sysadmin and clobber him
(unset noclobber).  Well, I'm not really, it ain't his fault.  Trouble is, 
this is one of two solaris boxen one of which (the other one) runs an Ingres 
DBMS so the tmpfs in RAM is good for that box.  We'll have to investigate the 
whys of this particular crash (this box has had two spells of uptime in its 
~five year life to date so we're not generally low on swap).  

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly 
Met Eireann, Glasnevin Hill, Dublin 9, Ireland
Ph +353 1 8064276 Fax +353 1 8064275
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