AVDF Linux kernel could not recognize

whole RAM
After initial setup of an Audit Vault and Database Firewall engineering system, I’ve started to
add several audit vault agents and secure targets. In the beginning it went quite smoothly. But
after a certain number of secured targets, there were continuously ORA-04031 errors. Most of
the errors were related to large pool and PX Msg buffers issues. The analysis of the trace files

has shown interesting stuff. But more on that in a later blog post. The real problem is the
available memory.

Symptoms

The Audit Vault and Database Firewall engineering system is running on a HP ProLiant
BL465c Gen 8. It comes with 32GB Memory. Should actually be sufficient for a system
engineering. It turned out that the 32GB are not recognized by operating system. As you can
see below the system has just 3GB memory in total.

[root@melete2 ~]# free

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3048108 2385888 662220 0 10720 1525036
-/+ buffers/cache: 850132 2197976
Swap: 4194296 453564 3740732

Reviewing

dmesg
shows that we lose 29 GB of memory.
Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Linux version 2.6.32-300.39.5.el5uek (mockbuild@ca-build56.us.oracle.com) (gcc version
4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-50)) #1 SMP Wed Mar 13 11:26:53 PDT 2013
Command line: ro root=/dev/vg_root/lv_root console=tty9 udevtimeout=10
KERNEL supported cpus:
Intel GenuineIntel
AMD AuthenticAMD
Centaur CentaurHauls
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 00000000bddde000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000bddde000 - 00000000bde0e000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000bde0e000 - 00000000d0000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fee10000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ff800000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000100000000 - 000000083efff000 (usable)
DMI 2.7 present.
last_pfn = 0x83efff max_arch_pfn = 0x400000000
MTRR default type: uncachable
MTRR fixed ranges enabled:
00000-9FFFF write-back
A0000-BFFFF uncachable
C0000-FFFFF write-back
MTRR variable ranges enabled:
0 base 000000000000 mask FFFF80000000 write-back
1 base 000080000000 mask FFFFC0000000 write-back
2 disabled
3 disabled
4 disabled
5 disabled
6 disabled
7 disabled
x86 PAT enabled: cpu 0, old 0x7040600070406, new 0x7010600070106
e820 update range: 00000000c0000000 - 000000083efff000 (usable) ==> (reserved)
WARNING: BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of memory, losing 29679MB of RAM.
------------[ cut here ]------------

Cause

According to an Oracle Metalink Note 1448147.1 this problem is related to a BIOS issue.

Solutions and Workaround

The solution described in Oracle Metalink Note 1448147.1 is to upgrade the BIOS or disable
MTRR in kernel. Since BIOS upgrade is not an option for this environment I’ll try to
workaround by disable MTRR.

Disable MTRR

Changing the

grub.conf
is basically quite easy if you find the boot files. When I first try it, I’d realized that there is no
grub configuration available. It seems that Oracle decided to not mount
/boot
at startup. So it is mandatory to first mount the boot partition. Afterward you just can add
disable_mtrr_trim
as additional kernel option.
[root@melete2 ~]# mount /boot
[root@melete2 ~]# df -kh /boot
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 145M 26M 112M 19% /boot
[root@melete2 ~]# vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/vg_root/lv_root
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Audit Vault Server 12.1.1.0.0
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-300.39.5.el5uek ro root=/dev/vg_root/lv_root console=tty9
udevtimeout=10 disable_mtrr_trim
initrd /initrd-2.6.32-300.39.5.el5uek.img
title Audit Vault Server 12.1.1.0.0
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-300.38.1.el5uek ro root=/dev/vg_root/lv_root console=tty9
udevtimeout=10 disable_mtrr_trim
initrd /initrd-2.6.32-300.38.1.el5uek.img
[root@melete2 ~]# reboot
Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Thu Jul 11 20:17:56 2013):
The system is going down for reboot NOW!
[root@melete2 ~]# Connection to melete2 closed by remote host.
Connection to melete2 closed.

After reboot we now have 32GB memory available.

[root@melete2 ~]# free

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 33024372 3930724 29093648 0 17868 2640744
-/+ buffers/cache: 1272112 31752260
Swap: 14680056 0 14680056

Unfortunately, the configuration of the AVDF appliance is not automatically updated to use
the extra memory. We have to do some manual changes.

Update Kernel Parameters

The kernel setting have to be changed to allow a bigger SGA. See Metalink Note 1529433.1
for more detailed information on how calculate and set the kernel parameters. For the
engineering system we will define a SGA with 20GB therefor we set the shmmax and shmall
as follows:

[root@melete2 ~]# vi /etc/sysctl.conf

…
kernel.shmmax=23622320128
kernel.shmall=5368709120
...
[root@melete2 ~]# sysctl -p
Increase SWAP

With 32GB memory, it is also advisable to enlarge the swap space. I’ve discussed this already
in the blog post Resize swap space on linux. Since the AVDF appliance does use logical
volumes it’s even a bit easier.

[root@melete2 ~]# swapoff -v /dev/vg_root/lv_swap

[root@melete2 ~]# lvresize /dev/vg_root/lv_swap -L +8G
[root@melete2 ~]# mkswap /dev/vg_root/lv_swap
[root@melete2 ~]# swapon -v /dev/vg_root/lv_swap

Increase SGA

Finally we can increase the SGA.

SQL> alter system set sga_max_size=20G scope=spfile;

System altered.
SQL> alter system set sga_target=20G scope=spfile;
System altered.
SQL> startup force

Conclusion