Recently I have had the misfortune of discovering the error of my ways (in a specific instance). By default when one installs a VIO Server or AIX O/S install, a default paging device is created. The size of the paging space is determined on the resources. I’ve seen some documentation which states that the paging space doesn’t have to reside in the rootvg. However, I fear this is for the secondary paging space, and not the primary. As I’ve found out recently, rootvg does require paging space. Additionally, it will require more than 1 pp (pp size=16MB). I haven’t found the size recommendation from IBM thus far, however, 2 PPs (16MB PP size) is sufficient to boot the machine.
You can run AIX without any paging space in the rootvg. However, you will never be able to restore a mksysb if you do this. There is also concern on having a paging device in the rootvg will cause some negative performance problems. Hence, I would recommend the following:
* if you don’t have a paging device in the rootvg, create one (at least 2 PPs in size)
* modify your /etc/rc.local so that when the system starts you disable the paging space for the rootvg (by default one uses /dev/hd6 so in the /etc/rc.local file have the line “swapoff /dev/hd6” inserted. Modify to your paging space in the rootvg.
To determine the paging space file in the rootvg, simply do a lsvg -l rootvg | grep paging