Strange errors "swap..."

[Uwe Doering]

Martin Schweizer wrote:
> I've got some strange errors but don't no what they realy mean:
> 
> [snip]
> Dec  8 09:47:52 saturn /kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: device: #ad/0x30001, blkno: 52232, size: 4096
> [snip]
> Dec  9 09:40:27 saturn /kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: device: #ad/0x30001, blkno: 3464, size: 4096
> Dec  9 09:40:39 saturn /kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: device: #ad/0x30001, blkno: 3464, size: 4096
> Dec  9 09:40:39 saturn /kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: device: #ad/0x30001, blkno: 14952, size: 8192
> [snip]
> 
> Do you have some ideas?

This can mean that the hard disk the swap pager tried to access has a 
problem.  This message doesn't necessarily mean that the operation 
failed, but that it took longer than 20 seconds to complete the swap 
request for a buffer, which is unusual for a healthy hard disk.

We had this once in conjunction with a dying hard disk which was 
fortunately part of a raid array, so it was sufficiently easy to replace 
the disk.

    Uwe
-- 
Uwe Doering         |  EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers
gemini at geminix.org  |  http://www.escapebox.net