Is this Linux? If so, you could try the following:
# sysctl vm.swappiness=100
(You might want to use sysctl vm.swappiness
first to see the default value, on my system it was 10
)
And then either use a program(s) that uses lots of RAM or write a small application that just eats up RAM. The following will do that (source: Experiments and fun with the Linux disk cache):
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
int max = -1;
int mb = 0;
int multiplier = 1; // allocate 1 MB every time unit. Increase this to e.g.100 to allocate 100 MB every time unit.
char* buffer;
if(argc > 1)
max = atoi(argv[1]);
while((buffer=malloc(multiplier * 1024*1024)) != NULL && mb != max) {
memset(buffer, 1, multiplier * 1024*1024);
mb++;
printf("Allocated %d MB\n", multiplier * mb);
sleep(1); // time unit: 1 second
}
return 0;
}
Coded the memset line to initialise blocks with 1s rather than 0s,
because the Linux virtual memory manager may be smart enough
not to actually allocate any RAM otherwise.
I added the sleep(1) in order to give you more time to watch the processes as it gobbles up ram and swap. The OOM killer should kill this once you are out of RAM and SWAP to give to the program. You can compile it with
gcc filename.c -o memeater
where filename.c is the file you save the above program in. Then you can run it with ./memeater.
I wouldn't do this on a production machine.
kern.log
at the time of the segfaults? A message aboutoom-killer
would indicate that your system doesn't have enough virtual memory, which could mean that swap isn't being used. Is this a virtualized server (and what kind)?segfault at 54 ip b7619ba8 sp bf9c3380 error 4
I'm thinking it's a hardware problem which is going to be a pain to track down. This is a physical server with dual Athlon MP 2000+ processors and 1.5GB of RAM. It runs fairly stably but segfaults during compiles.