IBM AIX 7.1 – Common Problem 234 – 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

A single PID grows RSS until paging spikes and apps slow or crash with errno 12.

Environment & Reproduction

Often seen with long-running JVMs, custom C daemons, or printer subsystems on AIX.

Root Cause Analysis

Process leaks heap or shared memory segments; svmon -P PID shows growing Inuse.

Quick Triage

Run svmon -G and ps -eo pid,vsz,rss,comm | sort -n -k3 to find growing processes.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use svmon -P PID -O segment=on,unit=MB to inspect segment growth over time.

Solution – Primary Fix

Restart the leaking process via stopsrc/startsrc or refresh -s subsystem-name.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Apply vendor ifix or upgrade the package via installp; tune AIXTHREAD_SCOPE if relevant.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

svmon -P shows stable Inuse and lsps -a Used% returns to baseline.

Rollback Plan

Revert installp updates with installp -r if regressions appear after the fix.

Prevention & Hardening

Add memory monitoring with nmon and set process restart cron for known leakers.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related to paging-space-low events and JFS2 latency from heavy pageout.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.1.

View all aix-7.1 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

IBM AIX 7.2 svmon, ps, and memory management documentation.