ZFS hanging at kernel boot now, but didn't before... (Re: ZFS MFC heads up)

[Joe Karthauser]

Hi Kip,

I seriously don't understand what has happened. If I boot kernel.old I 
still get the same problem. Very confusing. :(.

Joe

on 21/05/2009 19:28 Kip Macy said the following:
> I have no idea what is happening. I think our best bet is having
> someone with insight into ATA provide us with help in adding
> diagnostics.
>
> Sorry for the trouble. Perhaps you can just roll back to 7.2 for now.
>
> Cheers,
> Kip
>
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Joe Karthauser<joe at freebsd.org>  wrote:
>> Hmm, I've had a bit of a miserable afternoon trying to fight my RELENG_7
>> server, which now doesn't boot. :(.
>>
>> So, it's a ZRAID2 pool with a ufs/gmirror root partition split over 5 disks
>> (gmirror on 500Mb partition on each of five disks, and zraid2 over the rest
>> of each drive).
>>
>> What I did was to update the userland, and then reboot. I didn't upgrade the
>> kernel (but I've subsequently done that and have the same problem).
>>
>> What happens is that the kernel hangs booting just after displaying a LABEL
>> message or ZFS pool/spool message. I _can_ get it to boot if I boot single
>> user with acpi switched off. When I do that I can manually start zfs, and
>> mount all the partitions. However, one of the disks is missing.... more on
>> that next.
>>
>> The machine is running a gigabyte motherboard (domestic gamer P35 board,
>> similar to this
>> http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2533,
>> although it might be a DS4 variant).  I've got 5 of the 6 sata ports wired
>> to a 5 unit SATA hot swap bay (5 drives vertially mounted into 3 5-1/4" bays
>> kind of thing).
>>
>> Now, because of the gmirror I can boot the system on any disk, or
>> combination of plugged in disks. I should be able to succeed with the
>> kernel probe up to the attempt to mount the root filesystem irrespective of
>> any zfs pool, etc. And, indeed, this has been working fine for about two
>> years.
>>
>> But, now it hangs in the same place no matter what disk I boot on (I've
>> tried every bay).
>>
>> But, without ACPI enabled it does appear to boot ok... what's going on here?
>> Is it possible that the machine has developed a hardware fault?
>>
>> Ok, finally, if I boot with ACPI disabled then one of the disks is missing.
>> If I unplug it I get a disconnect message from the ata device, and a
>> reconnect and reinit attempt when I plug it back in, but no device appears
>> on the bus. Usually I can do a 'atacontrol detach sata4; sleep 1; atacontrol
>> attach sata4' and the device reappears. This happens on the other buses, but
>> not on the last one. It's not the disk, because if I swap it into another
>> bay, it comes up and appears on the bus. On the other hand it doesn't appear
>> to be that controller or slow in the drive bay because if I unplug all the
>> over disks the system will boot that disk and get as far as the hang....
>> hmm.
>>
>> Is this a consequence of disabling the ACPI?
>>
>> Does anyone have a clue what might be going on?
>>
>> Joe
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>
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