From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ray Olszewski Subject: Re: kernel log messages and disk space Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:50:24 -0700 Message-ID: <4317AFE0.4080600@comarre.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Karthik Vishwanath , linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org OK, Karthik. With the extra information, I'm adding the list back in, since other might have a more helpful response than I. Specifics below. Karthik Vishwanath wrote: > On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, at 17:14, Ray Olszewski wrote to Karthik Vishwanath: > > >>I'm sorry, Karthik, but this information doesn't make sense to me. >> >>Normally, hda1 would be a partition, not a drive, so I really do not >>understand what all this output means. If it is something that makes >>sense ... say one of those old versions of Linux that boot from a DOS >>directory ... you'll need describe the setup. >> >>If not, I'd want to see an fdisk for /dev/hda (the drive itself), not >>for a partition. >> >>Also, if you look back at my Aug 21 message, I asked for more >>information than a partition table. Please provide it. >> > Just a reminder for others; the original issue was that the logs were filling up with messages of this sort (I'm picking a representative example): Aug 18 07:38:18 mithrandir kernel: attempt to access beyond end of device Aug 18 07:38:18 mithrandir kernel: 03:01: rw=0, want=2031123176, limit=13277691 > > Heres all the information you had requested, i.e. all of which I could get > without asking you more for clarification... > > 1. df > > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on > /dev/hdb2 11535376 2731884 8217524 25% / > tmpfs 257164 0 257164 0% /dev/shm > /dev/hdb3 11519672 9960692 973816 92% /home > /dev/hdb1 53676064 33833024 19843040 64% /dosd > /dev/hda1 13264712 4129016 9135696 32% /dosc This suggests no problem. > 2. fdisk /dev/hda: > > The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1653. > There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, > and could in certain setups cause problems with: > 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) > 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs > (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) > > Command (m for help): p > > Disk /dev/hda: 13.6 GB, 13601193984 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1653 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/hda1 * 1 1653 13277691 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) This is consistent with the df output and tells us that there is nothing ugly about how the partition is positioned on the disk. It also tells us that the partition hda1 occupies all of the drive hda. > 3. reports by dmesg on boot wrt ide info > > ide0: BM-DMA at 0xff00-0xff07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA > ide1: BM-DMA at 0xff08-0xff0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA > hda: WDC WD136AA, ATA DISK drive > hdb: ST380020A, ATA DISK drive > hdc: CD-RW 48X24, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive > hdd: CRD-8322B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive > ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 > ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 > hda: 26564832 sectors (13601 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=26354/16/63, > UDMA(33) > hdb: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=155061/16/63, > UDMA(100) > Partition check: > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: [PTBL] [1653/255/63] p1 > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: [PTBL] [9729/255/63] p1 p2 p3 p4 > ext3: No journal on filesystem on ide0(3,66) These last 3 lines are new to me (at least for ide devices). That may just mean you're running a newer kernel than I (I run 2.4.27 here, on my main Linux host). > 4. (from email of 21-Aug: output of "free" (both lines) run proximate to > the messages in the logs) - I didn't quite get what you were asking. I > thought it must be the out of free > > total used free shared buffers cached > Mem: 514332 506868 7464 0 9008 307692 > -/+ buffers/cache: 190168 324164 > Swap: 1036184 408 1035776 Sorry I was not clearer here. I meant that I'd like to see (or have you check) the output of "free" from a time when you are getting these errors logged ... to see they are associated with filling up RAM as reported on the second line, or with just starting to use swap. If so, it may mean you have either a bad spot high in RAM, or a bad swap partition, but it rarely matters because you rarely use the problem area. This is really a long shot, but not so long that I haven't actually experienced it, so I though it worth asking. > > The machine has not had any kind of an "update", except being physically > relocated a few miles in space (in newer, better, cooler apartment :-) Good for you. (I assume you too were relocated.) > There should almost be no hard drive activity on hda1 (hence, not mounting > it avoids the original issue), from any activity that I am cognizant > about, that I use the system for. Well, any port in a storm, as they say, so this may be your best solution. And much as I hate to say it (since this is Linux, not Windows), occasionally this sort of thing can be a soft problem that gets fixed by a reboot (I had a quite different filesystem problem last week, where the kernel couldn't read some directories, that a reboot completely solved). You originally said the timestamps were "quite varied", so I didn't really ask myself if some particular process might be causing the errors. But I'd suggest you think if there is some regular cron job (one example is updating the "locate" database) that is associated in time with the errors. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs