Windows Server

Bodger · Guest

User Memory Quotas

We are trying to track down a problem that is plaguing us. It seems
even though we have a ton of memory and large pagefile.sys our programs
start to fail as if there is no memory in which to run.

We think there might be a Quota on our User that we are hitting some
maximum allowed memory quota.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/proddocs/en-us/541.asp

We have allowed the user and administrator to adjust the quotas, but we
cannot find out a way to query if a quota exists or how to set the
quota itself.

How do you find out if a quota exists? And how does one change it if
it does exist?

I cannot find any gui in our system that allows us to access it. Only
a local policy that allows the user to change quotas.

We are not a domain, only a workgroup of exactly one computer in a
remote site.

Details:

We have Windows 2003 Server in a remote data center, it is a web server
among other things. To support the services provided by the web
server we run some home grown programs in a logged in user account
running in the task bar. We have 4 gigs of memory (we rarely use over
700 megs) and 6 gigs of pagefile.sys.

When our programs have been running for a long time the memory does
creep up, but the total between them is no more then 100 megs. We run
Active State Perl programs as well that come and go as necessary.

Herb Martin · Guest

"Bodger" <jbrown@jlbprof.com> wrote in message
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Ken Schaefer · Guest

IN addition to Herb's comments, perhaps you have some other issue with your
app.

Tools like memmonitor, memtriage etc might help
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/all/techref/en-us/Default.asp?url=/Resources/Documentation/windowsserv/2003/all/techref/en-us/rktools_overview.asp

Cheers
Ken

"Herb Martin" <news@LearnQuick.com> wrote in message
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Roger Abell · Guest

Also, the user right policy you have mentioned governs
the ability to adjust quotas used the processor scheduling
algorithms. AFAIK it is not involved in adjustment of
memory usage.

--
Roger Abell
Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
"Bodger" <jbrown@jlbprof.com> wrote in message
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Herb Martin · Guest

"Roger Abell" <mvpNOSpam@asu.edu> wrote in message
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Roger Abell · Guest

"Herb Martin" <news@LearnQuick.com> wrote in message
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Roger Abell · Guest

This is curious Herb, but based on the Whidbey era doc
http://whidbey.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dllproc/base/setprocessworkingsetsizeex.asp
SE_INC_BASE_PRIORITY_NAME is the needed privilege
to use SetProcessWorkingSetSizeEx to increase either the minumum
or maximum WS size to greater than the then current values.
This privilege is in the GUI "Increase Scheduling Priority"
i.e. SeIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege

So, to impact the time-slice results from the scheduler algorithm
one needs the "quota" priv, but to alter the mem allocation algorithms
one needs the "scheduling" priv.
Figures.
--
Roger Abell

"Herb Martin" <news@LearnQuick.com> wrote in message
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Bodger · Guest

Thank you for your replies.

Following most of your descriptions, it seems the quota's are on a per
process basis. If that is true, I think this is not my problem. The
problem can best be described as the system hits a brick wall.
Programs that are running continue to run but have odd behavior and new
programs will not start (they fail out of the starting gate). I have
started a performance log to monitor every 2 minutes various counters
such as available memory and such. But I find it hard to believe we
have run out of physical and virtual memory since between them we have
10 gigs. Our best post mortem analysis indicates that this happens if
one or both of the following is true, we have a high number of perl
processes running and/or our main programs are using a larger amount of
memory then usual. Our programs do have a memory creep but each one is
using only about 25 megs and we have 5 of them running, so that does
not seem to be too taxing for this machine.

So assuming that quotas are not my problem, could the logged in user be
limited on the overall number of handles that are open, or overall
memory consumed or overall resources in general consumed?

Bodger

Herb Martin · Guest

"Bodger" <jbrown@jlbprof.com> wrote in message
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Bodger · Guest

First we have 4 gigs of Ram and 6 gigs of Virtual Memory in 2
pagefile.sys (one on C and one on E drives). We have 2 CPU's, and 273
gigs of disk.

Software installed:

- Sun Webserver 6.1 (it is current).
- MySQL (not sure version)
- MailTraq (current version) is handling our SMTP and POP3 needs.
- ActiveState Perl (handling CGI requests from Sun Webserver).

- And a homebrew application (with 5 instances) that uses TAPI heavily
for dialing out.

- We run the homebrew application in a logged in user and can see the
applications in the task bar.

The situation is as follows:

99% of the time everything works smoothly. But periodically all heck
breaks lose and the best way to describe that is to say it is like we
hit a brick
wall.

When the failure happens the following is true:

- TAPI fails (we wrote the TAPI application so we are intimate with
what is failing). If you are familiar with TAPI the function
lineInitialize (very first step in using TAPI) returns an error.

- New programs do NOT start, they just fail at execution.

- Mailtraq does not seem affected it continues to function.

- The Webserver cannot start any perl programs to handle CGI forms.

- Our homebrew application cannot start any programs (we have it start
a program to email us if there is a failure with TAPI)

- Already running perl programs crash.

Sometimes this "storm" goes away after time and things go back to
normal by themselves, but most of the time we do a reboot to clear the
situation.

When a storm is happening either or both of the following are true:

- We have a higher volume of perl programs running at the time

or

- Our homebrew application has higher then normal memory usage.

Now our homebrew application does suffer from memory leaks but the
problem starts occurring when they are at 25 megs (not very high) so
times 5 we are
talking a max of 125 megs for all 5 programs.

Our current theory that we are working under is that there is some
maximum amount of memory or handles or someother resource that can be
open at any
given time for a logged in user. We feel that all our programs added
together are hitting that artificial limit.

We are no where near filling up Physical Ram much less Physical and
Virtual put together so we feel this is some artificial limit imposed
by the OS.

I have NEVER seen the Commit Charge Peak greater then 800 megs.

But during the storms the Task Manager does not respond so I cannot
confirm the Commit Charge/Peak value. The CPU is pegged, or the Task
Manager would have responded.

Are there any artificial limits to the max amount of memory, handles
etc that a logged in user can use?
Any other ideas on what to do or look for?

Thank you

Julian Brown

Roger Abell [MVP] · Guest

OK, first a couple of prefix remarks:
1. I did not follow the link in your initial post until after the
exchange about what the quota policy did, and so I was
running on assumption of which, rather than seeing in the
link it was the W2k3 new one
2. On a x86 system having such large memory does not
mean much once you get to two gigs available to user space,
although you can throw the three gig switch.

It sounds like you may be running out of heap for system objects.
You might want to review the following KB and related info:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=184802

--
Roger Abell

"Bodger" <jbrown@jlbprof.com> wrote in message
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Bodger · Guest

Roger

Wow, that might be the answer. We are reviewing it now. If we make
this change we will do it next week, can't afford to risk it over
Christmas vacation.

Thanx

Julian

Bodger · Guest

Hmm, something bothers me. Although this is likely our problem, it
seems hard to believe that their is a fixed size "system wide 48 mb
buffer" that all desktops are allocated from.

Can this 48 mb buffer be increased?

I am afraid if I tinker with it, some of my services will not properly
run.

Thanx

Julian

Roger Abell · Guest

That is exactly the got ya here. AFAIK the limit is hard-wired
and was set back when memory was much more limited and
expensive, and when systems were single user machines.
The issue is how many winstation desktops are there on your
running system as it seems you may need to increase this
(or to figure out why the app is consuming so much heap and
adjust design so objects are released at earliest opportunity)
but that increase in size of each impacts the total number of
allocations you have available. I would be glad to find out
there is a doc'd way to adjust this 48 meg size, but I have not
run on that info.

--
Roger Abell
Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
"Bodger" <jbrown@jlbprof.com> wrote in message
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Herb Martin · Guest

"Roger Abell" <mvpNOSpam@asu.edu> wrote in message
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