RE: stability problems with 2.4.24/Software RAID/ext3

From: Cress, Andrew R
Date: Thu Jan 08 2004 - 11:04:31 EST


Martin,

I've seen some issues with jbd/transaction.c in 2.4.20+ that look
similar to one of your panics. There was a fix by RedHat to the problem
I saw.

https://listman.redhat.com/archives/ext3-users/2002-December/msg00125.ht
ml
You may want to check it out to see if this fix is already included in
your 2.4.24 kernel.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-kernel-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:linux-kernel-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of martin f krafft
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 10:12 AM
To: linux kernel mailing list
Subject: stability problems with 2.4.24/Software RAID/ext3


Hi all,

I operate a groupware server which is giving me a very hard time.
It's an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with 1Gb of RAM, and four 7200 UPM IDE
harddrives, two attached to the primary channels of the onboard
controller, and two to the primary channels of a Promise 20269 EIDE
controller. The kernel is a 2.4.24 with the configuration I placed
here:

ftp://ftp.madduck.net/scratch/config-2.4.24-gaia.gz

The system is configured with 7 Software-RAID and three swap partitions:

md1: /boot (ext3) RAID 1 spanning hda1 and hdc1
md5: / (ext3) RAID 5 hda5/hdc5/hde5 with hdg5 as a spare
md6: /usr (ext3) RAID 5 hda6/hdc6/hde6 with hdg6 as a spare
md7: /var (ext3) RAID 5 hda7/hdc7/hde7 with hdg7 as a spare
md8: /usr/local (ext3) RAID 5 hda8/hdc8/hde8 with hdg8 as a spare
md9: /home (ext3) RAID 5 hda9/hdc9/hde9 with hdg9 as a spare
md10: /tmp (ext3) RAID 5 hda10/hdc10/hde10 with hdg10 as a spare

hda2 holds a non-RAID rescue system with RAID 1/5 supporrt

hdc2, hde2, hdg2 are swap partitions of 256 Mb each.

hde1 and hdg1 are unused.

The individial harddisks are identically tweaked with hdparm:

hdparm -A1 -B255 -c1 -d1 -p -u0 -W0 -Xudma6 /dev/hd{a,c,e,g}

See the end of this mail for details.

The system experiences severe stability problems, which I relate to
the filesystem, RAID, or controller code, because it's reproducible
with excessive disk operations. E.g., doing something like

rsync -a --exclude /tmp / /tmp/dump

will most likely crash the system with a kernel oops. This kernel
oops is not recorded in the log, but I took it down as follows:

kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address
00529610
kernel: printing eip:
kernel: c01c7f41
kernel: *pde = 00000000
kernel: Oops: 0002
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[__remove_inode_queue+17/48] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010202
kernel: eax: cef76320 ebx: cc529590 ecx: 00529610 edx : cc529540
kernel: esi: cc529540 edi: c1e59510 ebp: cc4e7cc0 esp : f3a55e54
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process kjournald (pid: 24176, stackpage=f3a55000)
kernel: Stack: 00000000 c01c862a cc529540 c02029d8 cc529540 c1e59ea0
c01fec42 cc529540
kernel: 00000040 f3a55ea4 00000d0d f7ee8280 f6965d34 00000000
00000000 00000000
kernel: 0000000f cb3b3840 e6e308a0 00000d0d cc0ec9c0 cc0eca40
cc0ec0c0 cc149bc0
kernel: Call Trace: [__refile_buffer+106/112]
[journal_free_journal_head+24/32] [journal_commit_transaction+4066/4352]
[kjournald+263/464] [commit_timeout+0/16]
kernel: [arch_kernel_thread+43/64] [kjournald+0/464]
kernel:
kernel: Code: 89 01 c7 43 04 00 00 00 00 c7 42 50 00 00 00 00 b8 09 00
00

kernel: <1>Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
virtual address 00000000
kernel: printing eip:
kernel: c01be950
kernel: *pde = 00000000
kernel: Oops: 0000
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[kmem_cache_reap+128/448] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010013
kernel: eax: 00000000 ebx: 00000001 ecx: c1c0d348 edx : c1c0d358
kernel: esi: 00000000 edi: 00000005 ebp: 00000000 esp : c1c33f38
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process kswapd (pid: 4, stackpage=c1c33000)
kernel: Stack: c1240260 000001d0 c1c0d348 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000020 000001d0
kernel: c0102aa0 00000006 c01bf646 00000006 c0102aa0 c0102aa0
000001d0 00000006
kernel: c0102aa0 00000000 c01bf706 00000020 c0102aa0 c1c32000
c0102940 c01bf824
kernel: Call Trace: [shrink_caches+38/176]
[try_to_free_pages_zone+54/96] [kswapd_balance_pgdat+84/160]
[kswapd_balance+25/48] [kswapd+141/176]

since the two crashes are related to kswapd and kjournald, I would
assume it's the underlying RAID code that's problematic. However,
maybe you can extract more information from the above crashes.

The following is a snapshot from `vmstat 1` prior to a regular
kernel panic, which resulted in a reboot (thanks to sys.kernel.panic
== 60):

1 1 2 10184 12344 47020 749912 0 0 0 4344 382 308 0
1 99
0 1 1 10184 12344 47020 749912 0 0 0 5936 395 334 0
2 98
0 1 1 10184 12332 47020 749916 0 0 4 4808 379 330 0
3 97
0 1 1 10184 12332 47020 749916 0 0 0 5008 342 277 1
0 99
0 1 2 10184 12328 47024 749916 0 0 0 5120 330 293 0
4 96
0 3 2 10184 12356 47040 750108 0 0 64 4772 367 360 0
3 97
0 1 1 10184 12460 47052 749704 0 0 1220 6236 352 390 1
4 95
0 1 1 10184 12044 47052 750096 0 0 2176 6772 371 497 6
5 89
0 1 1 10184 12388 47060 749704 0 0 324 7732 367 376 0
6 94
0 1 2 10184 12512 47068 749824 0 0 56 7448 365 312 0
1 99
0 1 1 10184 12832 47080 749444 0 0 424 6648 368 363 0
3 97
0 1 1 10184 11884 47092 750156 0 0 2304 7960 416 504 1
8 91
2 0 1 10184 12708 47100 749284 0 0 1772 6836 370 462 5
4 91

Interestingly, just now, the machine crashed differently. `vmstat 1`
was still running, but new processes could not be started, after the
kernel reported a lot of oopses in user-space processes (e.g. rsync,
top, zsh), as well as some of the kjournald oopses like above.
I have included the footprint of the user-space program oopses
further down. `vmstat 1` was happily printing the following away,
when the system was already unusable. The b > 127 value is
interesting, as it has been continuously increasing (well, in
a non-decreasing way) after a certain point, and somewhere on the
way, the system reached the state of agnosia.

0 127 2 16124 10304 43004 682188 0 0 0 0 109 7 0
0 100
0 127 2 16124 10304 43004 682188 0 0 0 0 111 5 0
0 100
0 127 2 16124 10304 43004 682188 0 0 0 0 114 9 0
0 100
0 127 2 16124 10304 43004 682188 0 0 0 0 111 5 0
0 100
0 127 2 16124 10304 43004 682188 0 0 0 0 115 9 0
0 100
0 128 2 16124 10420 43004 682060 0 0 0 0 119 12 0
0 100
0 128 2 16124 10420 43004 682060 0 0 0 0 122 11 0
0 100

Apart from these panics and hangups, the system also randomly issues
segfaults to processes, or reports a kernel oops. These take the
following form:

kernel: kernel BUG at mmap.c:842!
kernel: invalid operand: 0000
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[find_vma_prev+124/176] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010206
kernel: eax: c7ce4dc0 ebx: c7ce4e40 ecx: c7ce4dd8 edx: c95fde90
kernel: esi: 4e968000 edi: c7ce4658 ebp: d16b8ec0 esp: c95fde50
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process python2.1 (pid: 24868, stackpage=c95fd000)
kernel: Stack: c7ce4e40 4e968000 00001000 d16b8ec0 c01b7104 d16b8ec0
4e968000 c95fde90
kernel: c01d116d e70b82c0 4e93d000 00001000 c01b6a44 d16b8ec0
4e93d000 e70b82c0
kernel: c7ce4dc0 c7ce4e40 00000000 4e968000 00001000 c01b6550
d16b8ec0 4e968000
kernel: Call Trace: [do_munmap+132/432] [link_path_walk+1309/1776]
[get_unmapped_area+164/320] [do_mmap_pgoff+400/1504] [old_mmap+269/336]
kernel: [system_call+51/80] [sys_fstat64+73/128] [system_call+77/80]
kernel:
kernel: Code: 0f 0b 4a 03 80 86 34 c0 89 d8 5b 5e 5f 5d c3 39 5d 00 eb
ea

or:

kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address
712e746b
kernel: printing eip:
kernel: c01eb950
kernel: *pde = 00000000
kernel: Oops: 0000
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[proc_pid_stat+144/800] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010206
kernel: eax: dd95e5ad ebx: d0988500 ecx: d098851c edx: 712e7463
kernel: esi: f5138000 edi: d5ce25ad ebp: 000003ff esp: f3a9de14
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process top (pid: 26768, stackpage=f3a9d000)
kernel: Stack: c01e9eb9 f5138000 c0361e64 cbc4f1c0 cbc4f1c0 c01ea17e
e70b8c40 cbc4f1c0
kernel: 0000000b 00000004 f5138000 ffffffea fffffff4 cbc4f82c
cbc4f7c0 e70b8c40
kernel: c01d0b03 cbc4f7c0 e70b8c40 e70b8c40 e5ac300e fffffffe
f3a9df0c c01d116d
kernel: Call Trace: [proc_pid_make_inode+121/160]
[proc_base_lookup+254/560] [real_lookup+195/240]
[link_path_walk+1309/1776] [get_empty_filp+77/288]
kernel: [proc_info_read+87/272] [filp_open+98/112]
[sys_read+163/304] [system_call+51/80] [sys_close+78/96]
[system_call+77/80]
kernel:
kernel: Code: 8b 42 08 2b 42 04 8b 52 0c 01 c7 85 d2 75 f1 ba ff ff ff
ff

Thanks for any hints or pointers!

hdparm configuration:

multcount = 16 (on)
I/O support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 6 (on)
geometry = 238216/16/63, sectors = 240121728, start = 0
busstate = 1 (on)
Model=Maxtor 6Y120L0, FwRev=YAR41BW0, SerialNo=Y31GHARE
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=240121728
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
*udma6
AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
Drive Supports : ataATA-1 ATA-2 ATA-3 ATA-4 ATA-5 ATA-6 ATA-7

--
martin; (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
\____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:"; net@madduck

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