IBM AIX 7.3 – 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

Processes get SIGDANGER and AIX kills low-priority jobs.

Environment & Reproduction

Workloads with memory leaks or undersized /tmp paging hit limit.

Root Cause Analysis

Computational paging fills hd6 faster than VMM can reclaim.

Quick Triage

Check lsps -a and svmon -G for paging usage trend.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use svmon -P -O sortseg=pgsp to find heaviest pagers.

Solution – Primary Fix

Extend paging with chps -s NN hd6 or add new paging LV via mkps.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Tune vmo minperm%/maxperm% if FS cache pressure caused it.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

lsps -s shows usage well under 80% under load.

Rollback Plan

Remove added paging with rmps once leak is fixed.

Prevention & Hardening

Set npswarn/npskill thresholds and monitor with topas -P.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Pairs with low-memory OOM-style killer messages in errpt.

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

IBM Docs: VMM tuning, lsps, mkps, vmo.