memx(8)memx(8)NAMEmemx - memory exerciser
SYNOPSIS
/usr/field/memx -s [-h] [-ofile] [-ti] [-mj] [-pk]
OPTIONS
The memx options are as follows: Print the help message for the memx
command. Disables automatic shared memory testing. Save diagnostic
output in file. Run time in minutes (i). The default is to run until
the process receives a CTRL-C or a kill -15 pid command. The memory
size in bytes (j) to be tested by each spawned process. Must be
greater than 4095. The default is (total-memory)/20. The number of
processes to spawn (k). The default is 20. The maximum is also 20.
DESCRIPTION
The memx memory exerciser spawns processes to exercise memory by writ‐
ing and reading three patterns: 1's and 0's, 0's and 1's, and a random
pattern.
You specify the number of processes to spawn and the size of memory to
be tested by each process. If the shmx Shared Memory exerciser is
present, it will be the first process spawned; the remaining processes
are standard memory exercisers. The memx exerciser will run until the
process receives a CTRL-C or a kill -15 pid command.
A logfile for you to examine and then remove is created in the current
working directory. If there are errors in the logfile, check the syslog
file where the driver and kernel error messages are saved.
RESTRICTIONS
The memx exerciser is restricted by the size of the available swap
space. The size of the swap space and the size of internal memory
available determines how many processes can run on the system. For
example, If there is 16 Mbytes of swap space and 16 Mbytes of memory,
all of the swap space would be used if all 20 spawned memory exercisers
are running. In that event, no new processes would be able to run. On
systems with large amounts of memory and small swap space, you must
restrict the number of memory exercisers and/or the size of memory
being tested.
If there is a need to run a system exerciser over an NFS link or on a
diskless system there are some restrictions. For exercisers that need
to write into a file system, such as fsx(8), the target file system
must be writable by root. Also, the directory in which any of the
exercisers are executed must be writable by root because temporary
files are written into the current directory. These latter restric‐
tions are sometimes difficult to overcome because often NFS file sys‐
tems are mounted in a way that prevents root from writing into them.
Some of the restrictions may be overcome by copying the exerciser to
another directory and then executing it.
You should specify the -s option to disable automatic shared memory
testing, which is not supported.
EXAMPLES
The following example tests all of memory by running 20 spawned pro‐
cesses until a CTRL-C or kill -15 pid command is received: %
/usr/field/memx The following example runs 10 spawned processes, memory
size 500,000 bytes, for 180 minutes in the background. %
/usr/field/memx -t180 -m500000 -p10 &
SEE ALSO
Commands: cmx(8), diskx(8), fsx(8), shmx(8), tapex(8)memx(8)