IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 54 – 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

lsps -s shows >80% paging used; system unresponsive with high svmon paging activity.

Environment & Reproduction

Workload growth or memory leak on LPAR with undersized paging space.

Root Cause Analysis

Real memory pressure forces aggressive page-out to /dev/hd6.

Quick Triage

Run lsps -a, vmstat 2 5 and topas to spot pi/po activity.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use svmon -G and svmon -P -O sortseg=pgsp to find top consumers.

Solution – Primary Fix

Add paging with mkps -s 8 -a rootvg or extend with chps -s 4 hd6.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Increase LPAR memory via DLPAR add operation from HMC.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

lsps -s shows <50% used and pi/po near zero in vmstat.

Rollback Plan

Reduce paging with rmps after stabilising and confirming low use.

Prevention & Hardening

Right-size paging to >=1x RAM and monitor with nmon.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

PAGING_SPACE_LOW, JFS2 thrashing, oom-style hangs.

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 on paging and svmon.