Large page sizes on Solaris 9

Question

I am trying (and failing) to utilize large page sizes on a Solaris 9 machine.
# uname -a
SunOS machinename.lucent.com 5.9 Generic_112233-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
I am using as my reference "Supporting Multiple Page Sizes in the Solaris� Operating System" http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0304/817-6242.pdf
and
"Taming Your Emu to Improve Application Performance (February 2004)"
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0204/817-5489.pdf
The machine claims it supports 4M page sizes:
# pagesize -a
8192
65536
524288
4194304
I've written a very simple program:
main()
int sz = 10*1024*1024;
int x = (int)malloc(sz);
print_info((void**)&x, 1);
while (1) {
int i = 0;
while (i < (sz/sizeof(int))) {
x[i++]++;
I run it specifying a 4M heap size:
# ppgsz -o heap=4M ./malloc_and_sleep
address 0x21260 is backed by physical page 0x300f5260 of size 8192
pmap also shows it has an 8K page:
pmap -sx `pgrep malloc` | more
10394: ./malloc_and_sleep
Address Kbytes RSS Anon Locked Pgsz Mode Mapped File
00010000 8 8 - - 8K r-x-- malloc_and_sleep
00020000 8 8 8 - 8K rwx-- malloc_and_sleep
00022000 3960 3960 3960 - 8K rwx-- [ heap ]
00400000 6288 6288 6288 - 8K rwx-- [ heap ]
(The last 2 lines above show about 10M of heap, with a pgsz of 8K.)
I'm running this as root.
In addition to the ppgsz approach, I have also tried using memcntl and mmap'ing ANON memory (and others). Memcntl gives an error for 2MB page sizes, but reports success with a 4MB page size - but still, pmap reports the memcntl'd memory as using an 8K page size.
Here's the output from sysinfo:
General Information
Host Name is machinename.lucent.com
Host Aliases is loghost
Host Address(es) is xxxxxxxx
Host ID is xxxxxxxxx
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
Manufacturer is Sun (Sun Microsystems)
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
System Model is Blade 1000
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
ROM Version is OBP 4.10.11 2003/09/25 11:53
Number of CPUs is 2
CPU Type is sparc
App Architecture is sparc
Kernel Architecture is sun4u
OS Name is SunOS
OS Version is 5.9
Kernel Version is SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic_112233-11 [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
Kernel Information
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
SysConf Information
Max combined size of argv[] and envp[] is 1048320
Max processes allowed to any UID is 29995
Clock ticks per second is 100
Max simultaneous groups per user is 16
Max open files per process is 256
System memory page size is 8192
Job control supported is TRUE
Savid ids (seteuid()) supported is TRUE
Version of POSIX.1 standard supported is 199506
Version of the X/Open standard supported is 3
Max log name is 8
Max password length is 8
Number of processors (CPUs) configured is 2
Number of processors (CPUs) online is 2
Total number of pages of physical memory is 262144
Number of pages of physical memory not currently in use is 4368
Max number of I/O operations in single list I/O call is 4096
Max amount a process can decrease its async I/O priority level is 0
Max number of timer expiration overruns is 2147483647
Max number of open message queue descriptors per process is 32
Max number of message priorities supported is 32
Max number of realtime signals is 8
Max number of semaphores per process is 2147483647
Max value a semaphore may have is 2147483647
Max number of queued signals per process is 32
Max number of timers per process is 32
Supports asyncronous I/O is TRUE
Supports File Synchronization is TRUE
Supports memory mapped files is TRUE
Supports process memory locking is TRUE
Supports range memory locking is TRUE
Supports memory protection is TRUE
Supports message passing is TRUE
Supports process scheduling is TRUE
Supports realtime signals is TRUE
Supports semaphores is TRUE
Supports shared memory objects is TRUE
Supports syncronized I/O is TRUE
Supports timers is TRUE
/opt/default/bin/sysinfo: /dev/ksyms is not a 32-bit kernel namelist
Device Information
SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
cpu0 is a "900 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-III+" CPU
cpu1 is a "900 MHz SUNW,UltraSPARC-III+" CPU
Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem might be?
Thanks in advance.
Mike

Answer 1

I ran your program on Solaris 10 (yet to be released) and it works.
Address Kbytes RSS Anon Locked Pgsz Mode Mapped File
00010000 8 8 - - 8K r-x-- mm
00020000 8 8 8 - 8K rwx-- mm
00022000 3960 3960 3960 - 8K rwx-- [ heap ]
00400000 8192 8192 8192 - 4M rwx-- [ heap ]
I think you don't this patch for Solaris 9
i386 114433-03
sparc 113471-04
Let me know if you encounter problem even after installing this patch.
Saurabh Mishra