IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 003 – Diagnosis and Fix

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Processes are killed and errpt logs PGSP_KILL events under memory pressure.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting paging space exhaustion issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

lsps -a
svmon -G

Root Cause Analysis

Insufficient paging space combined with memory-hungry workloads triggers the kernel PSKILL handler.

Quick Triage

Confirm scope with errpt, recent changes, and subsystem state via lssrc.

svmon -G
vmstat 2 5

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Correlate svmon working set with paging space activity to find the offending process.

svmon -P -O summary=basic
lsps -s

Solution – Primary Fix

Add or extend a paging space LV and activate it.

chps -s 4 hd6
swapon -a

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Create a new paging logical volume in datavg if rootvg is constrained.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Confirm subsystem returns to RUNNING state and errpt shows no new entries.

lsps -a
svmon -G

Rollback Plan

Restore prior configuration from mksysb or alt_disk_install clone if the fix regresses.

chps -d 4 hd6  # shrink only if usage low

Prevention & Hardening

Encode the fix in NIM customisation scripts and monitor via topas/nmon.

no -p -o lru_file_repage=0  # tune VMM

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

errpt LABEL=PGSP_KILL; OOM killer events

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.3.

View all aix-7.3 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

AIX Performance Management: VMM tuning