sparc/1007: on sparcstaion 2, swap activated/mounted but not used

[Spook <anon8973@cr537935-a.rchrd1.on.wave.home.com>]

>Number:         1007
>Category:       sparc
>Synopsis:       on sparcstaion 2, swap activated/mounted but not used
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    bugs
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Dec 13 20:20:02 MST 1999
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Charlie Root aka stephen.gregory@canada.com
>Organization:
net
>Release:        2.6
>Environment:
	
	System      : OpenBSD 2.6
	Architecture: OpenBSD.sparc
	Machine     : sparc
>Description:
	At boot time the kernel reports that /dev/sd0b 
is mounted as swap. The command `swapctl -l` also reports
that /dev/sd0b is in use as swap. However only 4k of 64MB 
is ever used. When trying to compile emacs the compiler dies 
with the error: "virtual memory exhausted". The swap is
never used durring the compile beyond the 4k as reported by `top`
and `vmstat`.
	A line for the swap partition was not added by default in fstab.
Without any line in /etc/fstab the kernel still used a "swap_device".
Based on errors when trying to access /dev/sd0b it is belived that 
this "swap_device" was /dev/sd0a.
The following line was added manually with no change in behaviour. 
		/dev/sd0b none swap sw
	The platform is a Sparc Station 2 with 64MB ram, ~64MB swap.
The same behaviour was noticed using OpenBSD 2.5, but was not fully tested
as 2.6 shipped and it was hoped that the new kernel would work :-)

bash-2.03# vmstat
 procs   memory     page                    disks         faults   cpu
 r b w   avm   fre  flt  re  pi  po  fr  sr s0 s1 f0 r0   in   sy  cs us sy id
 0 0 0  8328 43552   17   2   0   0   0   0  1  0  0  0  208   25   6  2  1 96

bash-2.03# swapctl -l
Device      1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Priority
/dev/sd0b       65520        4    65516     0%    0

bash-2.03# top -n
load averages:  0.16,  0.16,  0.35    21:45:01
15 processes:  1 running, 12 idle, 2 stopped

Memory: Real: 676K/18M act/tot  Free: 43M  Swap: 4K/64M used/tot

#disklabel /dev/sd0c
  <snipped>
16 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:   102440        0    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0 - 196)
  b:   131040   102440      swap                        # (Cyl.  197 - 448)
  c:  2068560        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 3977)
  d:   204880   233480    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  449 - 842)
  e:  1630200   438360    4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  843 - 3977)
b


	
>How-To-Repeat:
	install OpenBSD 2.6 on a sparc station 2. Attempt to allocate a
largeish chuck of ram. Whatch malloc fail.
	
>Fix:
	none sorry
	
I would like to take this time to thank the OpenBSD team: THANKS!!










>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: