unexplained system hangs - possible smbfs issue ??

Murray Taylor MTaylor at bytecraft.com.au
Sun Oct 9 19:42:19 PDT 2005


 

---------------------------------------------------------------
The information transmitted in this e-mail is for the exclusive
use of the intended addressee and may contain confidential
and/or privileged material. Any review, re-transmission,
dissemination or other use of it, or the taking of any action
in reliance upon this information by persons and/or entities
other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you
received this in error, please inform the sender and/or
addressee immediately and delete the material. 

E-mails may not be secure, may contain computer viruses and
may be corrupted in transmission. Please carefully check this
e-mail (and any attachment) accordingly. No warranties are
given and no liability is accepted for any loss or damage
caused by such matters.
---------------------------------------------------------------

***This Email has been scanned for Viruses by MailMarshal.***
-------------- next part --------------
 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Garrett Cooper
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 11:45 AM
To: FreeBSD Questions
Subject: Re: unexplained system hangs - possible smbfs issue ??

On Oct 9, 2005, at 5:14 PM, Murray Taylor wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have a system using smbfs that locks up every few hours.
>
> The system is running a cron job every minute, that opens
> a directory that is actually a smbfs mounted directory on a
> Windows Server 2003 machine. The program reads the directory
> looking for a particular file pattern, opens and processes the file
> then closes and renames the file.
>
> What this means is that the smnfs mounted directory file count
> constantly
> increases.
>
> The hang mentioned is just that... the cron job doesnt run, you cannot
> login on the console (well you can type root and <enter> and thats it,
> no password prompt appears). If there is an open console session,
> a single command can be issued then the console freezes.
> The only recovery is a power cycle.
>
> We have run the programs under a test framework to do a month load
> of files in an hour, and cant hang things, yet the production box
> (which is technically a better machine, but runs the same OS versions
> as the testbed) will hang under 'normal' use every few hours. Its  
> almost
> clock regular, except that it is slowly reducing the time between  
> hangs.
>
> We have just purged the Windows directory, and it seems so far to
> have extended the hang window.
>
> Are there any known issues with smbfs and large directories???
>
> NB We have other processes that use smbfs without the large number of
> files on the Win systems and these have run ok for years.
>
>
> It will hang on both these production versions.
>
> FreeBSD xxxhostnamexxx 4.10-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE #0: Tue  
> May 25
> 22:47:12 GMT 2004
> root at perseus.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>
> FreeBSD xxxhostnamexxx 4.10-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE-p7 #3: Thu
> Apr 14 15:34:37 EST 2005
> root at svmysql3.xxxdomainnamexxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SVMYSQL3  i386
>
>
> mjt
>
> -- 
> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
>
> Murray Taylor
> Bytecraft Systems
> P: +61 3 8710 2555
> F: +61 3 8710 2599
> D: +61 3 9238 4275
> E: mtaylor at bytecraft.com.au

     Those are a lot of files =\... a temporary solution might be to  
compress old log files past a particular date, or use an actual  
database system, but yeah... I could see something odd occurring with  
the FreeBSD machine.
     However, you didn't provide a lot of information about the FBSD  
machine. What are the specs for it, hardware-wise? Just curious.
     Also, what's the approximate amount of files in the directory in  
question?
-Garrett



Hi Garrett,

File count is on the order of 2500 and growing...
They are actually message files about 2 k long, which have to be kept
for 20 days
and we get 300 ish per day.

I am going to mod the processes to move files through the smbfs link
to other holding (rotated) directories on the FBSD box, but am trying to
nail down if this 
file count / access method is the root cause of the problem.


The machines are

CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz (2000.04-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf24  Stepping = 4
 
Features=0x3febfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE
,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SS
E2,SS,HTT,TM>
real memory  = 266801152 (260548K bytes)
avail memory = 254156800 (248200K bytes)

we have had the same problem on this one

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz (3200.13-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf41  Stepping = 1
 
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE
,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SS
E2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Hyperthreading: 2 logical CPUs
real memory  = 2147274752 (2096948K bytes)
avail memory = 2088042496 (2039104K bytes)

This one was also running the database at the time which got ugly, so
the processes were moved to the top machine. Not it can hang without
nailing the DB.... sigh.



cheers
mjt



More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list