kern/103455: "swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer" with page file enabled (causes lockups)

[Punkey Funky]

The following reply was made to PR kern/103455; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Punkey Funky <lee at punkey.net>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org, nick at nickwithers.com
Cc:  
Subject: Re: kern/103455: "swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer" with page file
 enabled (causes lockups)
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:36:29 +0000

 "Me too"...
 
 Running 7.0-CURRENT, although I've seen this issue since 6.x.
 
 I note that many online resources claim that this error arises with either 
 disks about to fail and/or bad cables/controller.
 
 In order to rule this out, I purchased brand new hardware:
 
 atapci2: <HighPoint HPT374 (channel 0+1) UDMA133 controller> port 
 0xdb00-0xdb07,0xdc00-0xdc03,0xdd00-0xdd07,0xde00-0xde03,0xdf00-0xdfff irq 
 17 at device 11.0 on pci0
 atapci3: <HighPoint HPT374 (channel 2+3) UDMA133 controller> port 
 0xe000-0xe007,0xe100-0xe103,0xe200-0xe207,0xe300-0xe303,0xe400-0xe4ff irq 
 17 at device 11.1 on pci0
 [..]
 ad8: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250620AS 3.AAE> at ata4-master UDMA133
 ad10: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250620AS 3.AAE> at ata5-master UDMA133
 ad12: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250620AS 3.AAE> at ata6-master UDMA133
 [..]
 ar0: 476950MB <HighPoint v3 RocketRAID RAID5 (stripe 64 KB)> status: READY
 ar0: disk0 READY using ad8 at ata4-master
 ar0: disk1 READY using ad10 at ata5-master
 
 ... and despite the new hardware, the issue still occurs.
 
 I have checked the drives with smartmontools and see no issues reported.
 
 This leads me to believe that it's not (in this case) related to failing 
 hardware.
 
 This particular machine is a home system that performs filesharing, 
 firewall, DNS and mail server duties.  It's by no means heavily loaded.
 
 When the issue does occur, the server is unresponsive on the console, and 
 no other access (ssh, www, etc) is possible.  The server does respond to a 
 ping.
 
 -L