sqlservr.exe high memory usage for SBSMonitoring process

This seems to be a common issue with my SBS2003 installs. The administrative user will get an E-mail entitled: Allocated Memory Alert on 'ServerName' which directs you to the process table to find the culprit. In most of my cases I see two hogs. store.exe (Exchange) and sqlservr.exe. We will cover the issues surrounding store.exe in a later post, but for know here are my finding for the sqlservr.exe process. I found the fix in this thread on winserverhelp.com.

First verify that the sqlservr process at fault is in fact the SBSMonitoring one. First open Windows Task Manager, choose the processes tab, click the view menu and choose Select Columns. Check the PID column. This will show you the process ID of the entries in the process table. Sort this list by Mem Usage column and get the PID of the offending sqlservr.exe process. The to confirm the PID is SBSMonitoring at a command prompt type:

tasklist /svc

Look for the PID that matches your memory hog. It will look something like this. My PID was 376:

sqlservr.exe 376 MSSQL$SBSMONITORING

If this is the case, you can alter the memory settings for SBSMonitoring process with the following commands from the command line. (Thanks to David Copland)

osql -E -S servername\sbsmonitoring

sp_configure 'show advanced options',1
reconfigure with override
go
sp_configure 'max server memory', nnnn
reconfigure with override
go

My session looked like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>osql -E -S file-server\sbsmonitoring
1> sp_configure 'show advanced options',1
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system
administrator.
Configuration option 'show advanced options' changed from 0 to 1. Run the
RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> sp_configure 'max server memory',100
2> reconfigure with override
3> go
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system
administrator.
Configuration option 'max server memory (MB)' changed from 2147483647 to 100.
Run the RECONFIGURE statement to install.
1> quit

I set my server to use a maximum of 100MB of memory, and so far all seems well with it. I am planning on adding this to the normal maintenance cycle for all of our supported SBS2003 servers.

Till Next Time,

Sean Riley
President, DogRiley

rdesktop rocks

As you who follow this blog know we support both Linux and Windows for our clients. Utilizing each for their strengths.

As part of the rebuild for my laptop, I partitioned it with Windows XP and Fedora Core 4. I have been using Fedora Core 4 on it almost exclusively. After I went through the pain of converting all my outlook mail, tasks and address book into a non proprietary format it seems silly to go back to putting that into a container that only 1 computer can utilize. So as to date I have not gone back to using Word, Excel, or Outlook, on any of my machines, and have not missed it. I do some work for clients in Access and as such have not found an alternative for it, so I continue to use it as necessary.

However I do need frequently to access Windows machines either on my network or at client sites. For this I have a Windows desktop that works great, but if I am on the laptop I have been shutting down and rebooting into XP. This as you can imagine is a pain.

I know that Microsoft makes an RDP client for the Mac, so I thought I would see if anyone has made a Terminal Services client for Linux. Of course they do :) Its a sourceforge project and a stable released version. Woot ! rdesktop works great for quick and dirty access to my windows remote desktop clients and terminal servers.

rdesktop -fzb

Thanks to the rdesktop team for making Linux even better !

Till Next Time,

Sean Riley
President, DogRiley

SBS 2003 and APC java runtime

Today I ran into an issue that caused me to reboot a production machine. It pained me to do it, but I wasn't given a choice.

Anyway, during the reboot sequence, as Windows 2003 is loading, it would get to

applying computer settings

and would hang there.

From a workstation I was able to get to the shares, and Exchange was running, but I couldn't get the console session to load. I tried remote console it was down too. I was able to get into remote computer management. The events logs did not show anything strange, so I started looking for an answer.

Luckily I found this at SBSBLOG. Turns out that the APC Powerchute must be upgraded to 7.0. So boot into safe mode and disable the APC services, this will allow for console to load.

I have to give props to SBSBlog, it has helped out many times with great and timely info on Microsoft's SBS platform.

For those running APC, it's time to get on 7.0.



Will be doing the upgrade this weekend......

Its back........

My laptop finally arrived from Gateway. It had originally arrived over a week ago, but I was waiting for a new hard drive. The original one was only 40GB, and I wanted to load Fedora Core on it and dual boot Windows XP, so I got myself a 60GB drive for under $100. Once I got the new drive I set out to build the Operating Systems.

The first time the unit came back though there was some type of short in the system. As soon as I picked it up after building the OS's I noticed it. Anytime you tapped the keyboard or picked it up, the unit would shut off. So it got shipped back to Gateway for a second tour of the repair bench. This time they replaced a lot of stuff, and the unit is now back and working. Huzzah !

This post is being done under the FC4 installation. I had a little difficulty with the wireless set up, I have it working but not sure I understand they whys of the current configuration. I found a number of good resources during the set up but the best by far is Fedora Core 4 installation Notes, by Stanton Finley. It covers much of the application set-up issue that you run into, and was a great resource.

As for the issue related to the wireless card, which is orinoco_cs based. I found the answer on bugzilla, but still unsure of the reason behind having the wireless connection aliased.

Till Next Time,

Sean Riley
President, DogRiley