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STM and Virtual Partitions (VPAR)

With the September 2001 release of HP-UX 11i diagnostics, support has been added for VPAR (virtual partitions). This feature is initially available for N-class and L-class systems.

If virtual partitions are installed, the behavior of memlogd and some tools will be different than normal.

CAUTION
For the September 2001 release, the CPU Expert Tool is not supported on systems with virtual partitions installed. Using the CPU Expert Tool with virtual partitions will give unpredictable results.

memlogd: Changes in Behavior with Virtual Paritions

On computers with virtual partitions, customers/users will see the following changes in the behavior of the memory logging daemon, memlogd:

  1. There will be a memlogd running on each virtual partition (if the OnlineDiag product is installed on that virtual partition). Example: if an L-class has two virtual partitions set up, and the OnlineDiag product is installed on both virtual partitions, there will be one memlogd per virtual partition; that is, there will be a total of two memlogds on the system.

  2. Each memlogd will only monitor:

    1. memory allocated to the virtual partition in which it is running
    2. memory allocated to the virtual partition monitor
    3. memory not allocated to any virtual partition
    4. memory allocated to another virtual partition, in which the memlogd is running, although the memlogd in that virtual partition may not currently be running.

    Consequently, users can potentially see the same memory errors logged by the memlogds in different virtual partitions. Example: a memory error, 0xadb2074, detected by memlogd A on virtual partition A belongs to the memory allocated to the virtual partition monitor, so memlogd A logs that error in its memlog file; later on, the same memory error, 0xadb2074, belonging to the memory allocated to the virtual partition monitor occurs again, and is detected by memlogd B on virtual partition B, so memlogd B logs that error in its memlog file; thus, when the user views the memlog file in partition A, he will see the memory error 0xadb2074, and when the user views the memlog file in partition B, he will see the memory error 0xadb2074, as well. As a result, users can potentially be alerted by the memory monitor on each virtual partition (depending upon how the memory monitor's configuration file, default_dm_memory.clcfg, is set up on each virtual partition on the system) about the same faulty memory component, because the alerts are generated by the same memory errors).

  3. When on a virtual partitions system, the user chooses to view the detailed information of the memlog file via logtool, he or she will see two additional page statuses:

    1. Pending: page could not be entered into PDT This page status is used to indicate to the user that the following page could not be entered into the page deallocation table (PDT), either because the PDT is full, or because an error was encountered when memlogd tried to enter this page into the PDT.

    2. Pending: page may still be active This page status, logged by the memlogd in the memlog file, only applies to pages not belonging to the virtual partition in which the memlogd is running, to indicate to the user that the page has been entered into the PDT, but that memlogd cannot determine whether or not the OS has deallocated the page.

    Memory Expert Tool: Changes in Behavior with Virtual Paritions

    If running on a virtual partitions system and user selects to run the memory expert tool-> memory test, there are additional error messages that can be logged to the memory expert activity log file when the memory test failed (only on a virtual partitions system): 

    1.  An attempt to obtain exclusive access to a memory controller
via the vpmonitor driver failed.  This error is unexpected.  The memory
expert tool can not continue with the memory test.


      
Possible Cause(s)/Recommended Action(s):
   Internal application error.


    2. The memory subsystem is not recognized by this tool to support
virtual partitions.  The memory expert tool can not continue with the
memory test.


      
Possible Cause(s)/Recommended Action(s):
   Internal application error.


    3. An attempt to read syndrome error information 
was not successful.  The memory expert tool 
can not continue with the memory test.

      
Possible Cause(s)/Recommended Action(s):
   A process (possibly memlogd) in another virtual 
partition has took the virtual partition lock
away from the memory expert tool.  Rerun the tool later.


    4. An attempt to release the virtual partition 
lock failed.  This error is unexpected.  The memory
expert tool can not continue with the memory test.

      
Possible Cause(s)/Recommended Action(s):
   Internal application error.
The online Support Tools Manager (STM) was enhanced and updated 
for the current release.

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URL: http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/diag/stm/stm_vpar.htm
Last updated: Mon Jul 16 17:18:54 PDT 2001