3550 Memory issue

[byju70]

We are seeing heavy memory utlization in 2 of our 3550 switches. i am unable to get into the console of one of the switch and other is givings errors as "Jul 30 14:07:08.248 EDT: %SYS-2-MALLOCFAIL: Memory allocation of 393216 bytes failed from 0x122068, alignment 0

Pool: Processor Free: 1568804 Cause: Memory fragmentation

Alternate Pool: None Free: 0 Cause: No Alternate pool

-Process= "Virtual Exec", ipl= 0, pid= 64

-Traceback= 1B9F24 1BBEEC 12206C 14E68C 14E788 142F74 151BC0 1DB024"

WHat could be the problem. I am even unable to execute the running config command.Anybody faced similiar situation.

Image ver is Ver 12.1(19)EA1 with 65526K/8192K bytes of memory.

[deilert]

unfortunately the only way to revover from MALLOC errors is a reset , did you upgrade the code recently ? maybe the code is too big for the amout of DRAM you have in the box , another possibility is that you could be getting hit with a virus , are these L3 if sh look turn on net flow 'ip route-cache flow' on a few interfaces and look for virus related traffic( traffic from 1 ip address to the same port of many differne hosts.

you can also reference thir URL

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/iosswrel/ps1831/products_tech_note09186a00800a6f3a.shtml#tshooting

[byju70]

Thankx, But routing is not enabled in this switch, It's our access switch in DMZ and it has few webserver/file servers. So I have to wait for a maintenance window to reboot.Codes were not upgraded.

Any other thoughts..........

[rajesh444]

Hi,

After the reboot, you can monitor the switch using "sh proc cpu | e 0.0" & "show proc memory | e 0.0" commands to see which processes/protocols consume high CPU or memory.

Do you have any other Catalyst 3550s with the same IOS ver on your network?