5.2-RELEASE - Show stopper problem

[Ted Wisniewski]

(* In the last episode (Jan 11), Ted Wisniewski said:
(* > Thanks for your response...  As you can see in this output from the
(* > ps command you suggested, the processes are dfinitely waiting on the
(* > disk. BTW..  The syste in question was a fresh install from yesterday
(* > with no users other than myself (I did the cvsup to get it to
(* > 5.2-RELEASE).  It did hang when I did that with a similar result. 
(* > One of the "install -s etc.." processes went into the same state.
(* 
(* Are you seeing any errors in dmesg or /var/log/messages?  I haven't
(* seen any other reports of I/O hanging, so it might still be something
(* to do with your hardware or kernel config.

	No messages at all in /var/log/messages.  I am using the generic 
kernel in one instance and a custom one in another.   For the machine I sent
the "ps" info it is a Dell power edge 2650 running a generic kernel.  The
disk is configuration is a big raid 5 memory is 2G.  Since I can duplicate
(seemingly at will) on a number of different systems, I doubt it is specific
to one machines hardware (3 dell servers of differeing models, 1 dell PC,
and 3 noname brand PC's).

(* > On my test system the machine will run for days with this happening,
(* > however, I have another system that is actually doing a lot of
(* > I/O....  eventually it crashes (well locks up completely)...  If
(* > there is any particular info you might need, I am willing to do what
(* > I can.
(* 
(* If you can drop into ddb when it's locked up, I think there are some
(* commands you can run to print the kernel locks held by all the
(* processes, but I'm not sure what they are or how to interpret the
(* results.

	When it locks up...   It is literally frozen...  Only a power off
will cure.   I have occasionally seen a "page not present" panic..  Most
of the time the processes just start to pile up accessing the same place(s)
on disk.  None being able to be killed, and always when I reboot the system
after this there is a message about not being able to write buffers...  giving up...



Ted

-- 
|   Ted Wisniewski    		     E-Mail:  ted at mail.plymouth.edu        |
|   Manager, Systems Group           WEB:     http://oz.plymouth.edu/~ted/ |
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