SUMMARY: Location of Shared Memory

Claudia Miller (millerc@onlinelife.com)
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 15:11:26 -0800

Original message:
Claudia Miller wrote:
>
> I've installed Enterprise Pro v3.01 with Informix on my Ultra2 Enterprise Server
> Solaris 2.6
>
> I was able to configure my kernel to set Shared memory parameters and
> kernel parameters as requested in the Informix documentation.
> went into /etc/system and pasted the following:
>
> set enable_sm_wa = 1
> set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=268435456
> set semsys:seminfo_semmap=64
> set semsys:seminfo_semmni=4096
> set semsys:seminfo_semmns=4096
> set semsys:seminfo_semmnu=4096
> set semsys:seminfo_semume=64
> set semsys:seminfo_semmsl=100
> set shmsys:shminfo_shmmin=100
> set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=100
> set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg=100
>
> I'm also supposed to do the following and I can't find anything
> that says how to do this:
>
> Location of shared memory
>
> 0x0A000000L
>
> The last thing is -- after I did the first part of this -- whenever I reboot I
> get a message during booting:
> "enable_sm_wa = 1 not defined in the kernel" (that's the first item above)
>
> When I go to start the database I'm getting the following error message:
> "Fatal error Shared memory initialization"

Thanks to all who responded.

Stephen P Richardson <spr@myxa.com>
spillar@dent.agric.nsw.gov.au (Ron Spillane)
Ju-Lien Lim <julienlim@rocketmail.com>
Shubin Wang <shubin@brain2.nida.nih.gov>
Kwok Tang <kwok@pavilion.co.uk>

Well, this turns out to be one of those "I can't believe I'm so stupid" things.
I hadn't changed my /etc/ system file before I installed Informix for the first
time. So, after I cut and paste the above text into my /etc/system file
(deleting "set enable_sm_wa = 1") I reinstalled informix. I did boot -r. What
I didn't do was delete the informix directory and the informix temp directory
before reinstalling.

I got alot of useful suggestions, some of which are below:

From: Stephen P Richardson <spr@myxa.com>
I don't have the answers that you request, but I'm pretty sure that
the problem is not the starting address, nor is it that first
parameter.
I just wanted to warn you that this line:
> set shmsys:shminfo_shmmin=100
can cause problems with applications that only need a small shared
memory segment. In particular APC's PowerChute will not start if
this is set as shown. I have found that the default value - which
I believe is 0 (or maybe 1?) works just fine with Informix.

I think that the Informix install instructions are still written as
they were for the Solaris 2.1 install - which was considerably more
tricky than is required by current versions of Solaris.
________________________
From: spillar@dent.agric.nsw.gov.au (Ron Spillane)
To: millerc@onlinelife.com
the entry for set enable_sm_wa = 1
was only requiered for solaris 2.3 or 2.4 so you
should remove this entry from /etc/system, we are
running informix without that entry and it works fine.
____________________________________
From: Kwok Tang <kwok@pavilion.co.uk>
You don't need the "set enable_sm_wa = 1" parameter for Solaris 2.5 or
greater.