dewal@exunido.UUCP (05/12/87)
University of Dortmund Department of Computer Science Software Technology Laboratory We have got a MicroVax II (GPX). Several times it occured that proces- ses started on the graphic display stopped. At this point we were not able to use the graphic screen anymore. Trying to kill the processes lo- cated on the graphic screen failed. We had to reboot the system to use the graphic screen. At the first time we were lucky to login from an other terminal as system user to perform a shutdown. The other time we even could not log into the system anymore. The only possiblity left was to switch off the whole system. There were not many processes active when this problem occured. So it can- not be that an overload is responsible for this error. Why cannot the superuser kill the processes ? Is it not possible to kill processes located on the console (as the graphic display is also console device) ? How can we proceed when this error occurs, because I think that switching off the power is not a good solution. Thanks Sanjay Dewal (dewal@unido.uucp or dewal@exunido.uucp)
tedcrane@batcomputer.UUCP (05/28/87)
In article <137900001@exunido.UUCP> dewal@exunido.UUCP writes: >We have got a MicroVax II (GPX). Several times it occured that proces- >ses started on the graphic display stopped. At this point we were not >able to use the graphic screen anymore. Trying to kill the processes lo- >cated on the graphic screen failed. We had to reboot the system to use the >graphic screen. You don't say what version of VWS software you are using, however, there is a very general comment that applies to VWS up to V3.0 (and possibly 3.1). Every window has virtual memory associated with it. This memory is also allocated physical memory. There are several SYSGEN-type parameters that must be increased to provide physical memory for this purpose. The VWS installation procedure makes a guess at how much memory you will use and puts parameters like: NPAGEDYN PAGEDYN CTLPAGES into a file called SYS$SYSTEM:VMSPARAMS.DAT. If you look at that file, look for lines starting with QDSS (the GPX device). You'll see 'em. The problem is, these parameters are not big enough! Between VMS, VWS, and your usage of the machine, you run out of dynamic memory. One fix is to edit SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT (not VMSPARAMS!) and put in lines of the form: ADD_NPAGEDYN = xxx You can determine "xxx" by doing a SHOW MEMORY/POOL/FULL while the system is running (preferably when it is close to failure, with lots of windows). SHOW MEM will show that one of the various pools is getting empty. Increase its size. Another fix (and the two fixes should be applied concurrently) is to look in SYS$MANAGER:STARTVWS.COM. Note the parameters SYSTEM_POOL_SIZE and P1_POOL_SIZE. These are used to define logical names used by the window manager. If these logicals are defined BEFORE you run STARTVWS, the manager will allocate more extra space. Increase these values by defining logicals appropriately in SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP.COM before it calls STARTVWS.