How to clean up /dev/shm

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How to clean up /dev/shm

L1 Bithead

Hi everyone,

 

Been receiving alerts for a little bit around tmpfs /dev/shm being at 99% - how should we clean up this directory? What is this directory used for?

tmpfs /dev/shmtmpfs /dev/shm

 

Thanks!

1 accepted solution

Accepted Solutions

The workaround I have is that the Palo Alto needs to be rebooted. While we haven't run into any issues with it at 97% I would say it's safe to do a monthly reboot to clean up the directory.

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9 REPLIES 9

Cyber Elite
Cyber Elite

@gmcwilliams,

Restart the firewall. /dev/shm is used on the firewall the same as it is on any other Linux system, it's a temporary file store that uses memory instead of disk like /tmp does. Outside of restarting the firewall I'm not sure there's a way exposed to actually do anything about it outside of a reload. 

Does 10.0.* cause this to fill up faster?

 

EDIT: Is there anything we should worry about if this folder fills up? I just don't want an unexpected crash

Typically this is cleared on reboot but after upgrading to 10.0.6 its failed to clear the space on system reboot.

 

I have looked at the other drives on the PAN are there seems to be no capacity issues other then the tmpfs /dev/shm location at 97%.

 

Can yoU confirm whether this is expected on later versions 10.0.x +?

Where you able to to clean it, where you able to get to know why it is high.

We are having the similar issue

L0 Member

We are also seeing same behavior on VM-300 Palos after upgrade to 10.0.5, the tmpfs (/dev/shm)  is on 97%. Do we have any workaround or solution for this?

I am not sure why it gets so high, but it clears up on reboot. It does not seem to cause any issues while maxing out but it's probably safe to do a monthly reboot or whenever Palo releases a new update

The workaround I have is that the Palo Alto needs to be rebooted. While we haven't run into any issues with it at 97% I would say it's safe to do a monthly reboot to clean up the directory.

L0 Member

This is what we received from TAC:

 

When auto refresh for dashboard and content is happening very frequently (every 1-2 min) and continuously, some intermittent shm memory growth is still expected though but it should get released gradually and no big build-up should be observed and /dev/shm should not be filled up. But /dev/shm partition disk space builds-up .Also, expected to see Not enough space to load conent to SHM" errors in the system log.

This issue is already identified and reported on 10.0.0 over VM platforms - Engineering team comments that this fix requires some architectural changes on the report generation part of PanOS. Currently the change has been marked as a feature enhancement and is targeted to be addressed with PanOS 11.0 version or 10.2.0. The tentative target fix version depends on QA validation tests; which usually are completed prior to a week or two of the software release.

L2 Linker

Fixed in 10.1.11, but we're experiencing in 10.1.11-h1:

PAN-207604
Fixed an issue where system logs continuously generated the log message
: Not enough space to load content to SHM
.

https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/pan-os/10-1/pan-os-release-notes/pan-os-10-1-11-known-and-addresse... 

 

Supposedly resolved in 10.1.12, 10.2.6, 11.0.4, 11.1.0, 11.2.0. Waiting on maintenance window to apply.

https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA14u0000008Vu5CAE

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