IBM AIX 7.2 – Common Problem 102 – 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

psign_low warnings in errpt and processes killed by the kernel.

Environment & Reproduction

AIX 7.2 LPAR with default paging00 sized at install time.

Root Cause Analysis

Workload growth exceeds initial paging space allocation.

Quick Triage

Run lsps -a and svmon -G to see paging usage and free pages.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Capture svmon -P sorted by paging space to identify heaviest consumers.

Solution – Primary Fix

Extend paging00 with chps -s N paging00 to add logical partitions.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Add a second paging space on a different disk with mkps -a -n -s N rootvg.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

lsps -a shows paging usage below 50% and no further psign_low events.

Rollback Plan

Deactivate added paging with swapoff and rmps if extension caused issues.

Prevention & Hardening

Set vmo tunables and monitor with nmon to size paging properly.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

May coincide with PGSP_KILL events and out-of-memory process terminations.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.2.

View all aix-7.2 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

IBM Docs: chps, mkps, lsps and vmo paging tunables.