Server losing memory
Novell Cool Solutions: Question & Answer
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Q:
My server is having memory problems, and I'm pretty sure it's not due to old age! It runs out of memory after a few days of working just fine. Any suggestions?
A:
NetWare only has 4 GB of logical mapping space to work with. Although NetWare can handle up to 64 GB of ram, Intel's 32 bit architecture limits the Operating System to a 4 GB logical space mapping area (the memory above 4 GB must be accessed by mapping pages in and out of the 4 GB space). Because most applications run in the "kernel space" in NetWare (as opposed to "User Space" in other operating systems), all NLMs running there have a limited or finite amount of ram to work with. With this limited amount of ram, having the server setup correctly to run in NetWare is paramount for some applications and NLMs running on the server. Novell has found that by adjusting the settings on servers, memory fragmentation has been reduced and server uptime has been increased. These settings increase the amount of ram that NLMs can use in different cache pools. Changing these settings is equivalent to allocating buffers before they're needed or preparing a server to handle a greater load than the default settings for the server do.
Novell has seen memory fragmentation with a few different applications. One of the applications that contributes to this issue is TSAFS.NLM. Part of the problem is that TSAFS allocates large chunks of memory repeatedly during a backup (upwards of 700MB at a time). The memory is requested and released over and over until the memory becomes so fragmented that the server returns memory allocation errors, or it hangs or abends.
The issues seen and fixed with this problem have ranged from newer NLMs, to changed Server.exe files. By far the vast majority of the changes to resolve this issue have occurred in the operating system itself.
With the release of CSP11 (Consolidated Support Pack 11) comes newer server.exe files for NetWare. NetWare 6.5 Support Pack 2 and NetWare 6.0 Support Pack 5 contain the latest fixes and updates specific to the memory fragmentation issue. Novell strongly recommends that customers use these latest support packs for this issue.
For more details, see TID 10091980
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