From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Atom2 Subject: snapshot-origin freezes system - what am I doing wrong? Date: Fri, 15 May 2015 12:45:49 +0200 Message-ID: <5555CE5D.3030404@web2web.at> Reply-To: device-mapper development Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com Errors-To: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com To: dm-devel@redhat.com List-Id: dm-devel.ids Hello list, I am trying to setup a cow snapshot for a LV that is used as a master image for a number of VMs. The idea basically is to be able to update the master image even when VMs are up and running; the VMs should then still see the old state of the image and only when they are restarted they should connect to the new image. Searching the net seemed to point towards a snapshot-origin/snapshot solution - however I am unable to get this to work. Information on the net seems to be sparse, so I though I'd ask the experts on the list. Here are my steps: 1.) I have a LV in volume group VG named master.ROOT (/dev/mapper/VG-master.ROOT), 8GB, formatted as ext4 2.) I create a sparese file: truncate -size=8G /tmp/snapshot 3.) losetup -f /tmp/snapshot --> gives /dev/loop0 4.) dmsetup create mytest.img --table "0 $(blockdev --getsz /dev/mapper/VG-master.ROOT) snapshot-origin /dev/mapper/VG-master.ROOT 5.) dmsetup create mytest.img.cow --table "0 $(blockdev --getsz /dev/loop0) snapshot /dev/mapper/VG-master.ROOT /dev/loop0 P 8" So far so good ... however, when I try to mount the origin device by 6.) mount /dev/mapper/mytest.img the mount call doesn't return and the system gets unresponsive/freezes up to a point when OOM-killer is being invoked. Login attempts on the console time out and in essence it is only possible to reboot the system using magic-sysreq key combinations. I'd be very much obliged if someone in the know could provide me with information what's wrong with this approach. Many thanks in advance Atom2 P.S. Trying to replicate the setup with a second loop device instead of the LV for the master image seems to not suffer from this problem - mounting is possible without a hickup. The issue therefore seems to be connecte with the LV as the snapshot-origin device, but I have no clue how to sort that.