NOTICE: getcpages - waiting for 1 contiguous pages

[Pim Zandbergen]

bill at unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Heiser) writes:

>p.s.  I've not seen the getcpages on the console.  Only crash
>shows them.

The getcpages notice does not show on the console. It does
in /dev/osm after you have configured Operating System Messages
into the kernel. 

Same thing on the AT&T 3B2, so I suspect this is normal behaviour
for all true System V Release 3 ports.

I often get this notice when using huge amounts of memory,
like while running gcc and X11 at the same time.
Nothing seems to go wrong, though.

Here's an explanation of getcpages I got from someone at AT&T:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

getcpages is the name of a function in the operating system. This
function gets physically contiguous pages for a process to run.
The paging daemon, vhand, is responsible for freeing up the memory
as the need arises. In a busy system with limited memory and swap
space and with several large processes, when the system is unable
to get a contiguous page for a process the NOTICE is printed on
the console.

In the chapter on Performance Management of the 3B2 System
Administrator's Guide there is a section on Tunable Parameters.
The paging parameters in that section describe the operation
of the paging daemon vhand.

In the system that exhibits the problem, increase swap space
and modify GPGSLO and GPGSHI as necessary.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-- 
Pim Zandbergen                          domain : pim at cti-software.nl
CTI Software BV                         uucp   : uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ctisbv!pim
Laan Copes van Cattenburch 70           phone  : +31 70 3542302
2585 GD The Hague, The Netherlands      fax    : +31 70 3512837