Installation guide

F.1.4 Exercising System Memory
Use the memx command to exercise the system memory. The memx
command exercises the system memory by initiating multiple processes. By
default, the size of each process is defined as the total system memory in
bytes divided by 20. The minimum allowable number of bytes per process is
4095. The memx command runs 1s and 0s, 0s and 1s, and random data
patterns in the allocated memory being tested.
The files that you need to run the memx exerciser include the following:
• memx
• memxr
For more information, see the memx
(8) reference page
The memx command is restricted by the amount of available swap space.
The size of the swap space and the available internal memory determine
how many processes can run simultaneously on your system. For example,
if there are 16 MB of swap space and 16 MB of memory, all of the swap
space will be used if all 20 initiated processes (the default) run
simultaneously. This would prevent execution of other process. Therefore,
on systems with large amounts of memory and small amounts of swap
space, you must use the -p or -m flag, or both, to restrict the number of
memx processes or to restrict the size of the memory being tested.
The memx command has the following syntax:
memx -s
[-h][-msize][-ofile][-pnum][-tmin]
You can specify one or more of the following flags:
-s
Disables the automatic invocation of the shared memory
exerciser, shmx.
-h
Displays the help message for the memx command.
-msize Specifies the amount of memory in bytes for each process you
want to test. The default is the total amount of memory
divided by 20, with a minimum size of 4095 bytes.
-ofile Saves the output diagnostics in
file.
-pnum
Specifies the number of memxr processes to initiate. The
maximum number is 20, which is also the default.
F–4 Using the System Exercise Tools