Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Andreas Hasenkopf]

Hello,
thank you all for your emails with suggestions and comments on my
problem.
When messing around with the BIOS settings (switching SATA mode from
RAID to IDE) I get quite an obvious message stating that the S.M.A.R.T.
status of one of the disks is BAD.
Removing that disk solved the problem. My system is mounting the
remaining XFS partitions fast as usual.

Thanks again
Andi

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Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Peter Grandi]

>> Check your disks. I've seen harddisks dying in that way.
>> Suddenly access times are horrible. Test random access I/O and
>> compare times, not sequential - those might still look good.

> [ ... ] When messing around with the BIOS settings (switching
> SATA mode from RAID to IDE) I get quite an obvious message
> stating that the S.M.A.R.T.  status of one of the disks is
> BAD.  Removing that disk solved the problem. [ ... ]

The suggestion about checking disk error status was good, and
relates to an important but little known detail about SATA vs. SAS
disk drives.

Usually SATA drives are pogrammed to do a large number of firmware
driven retries in case of data errors, hanging the IO subsystem,
while SAS drives, which are expected to be used in RAID sets,
don't, and report errors immediately. So called "Raid Edition"
SATA drives often behave like SAS drives in this respect.

It is often possible but usually quite awkward to change that
setting for ordinary SATA drives.

Disabling extended fw retries is usually a good idea with Linux
anyhow, as it does sw retries anyhow, and very good for drives
used in RAID sets with redundancy, to reduce latency in the case
of errors.

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Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Emmanuel Florac]

Le Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:19:26 +0100 vous écriviez:

> Usually SATA drives are pogrammed to do a large number of firmware
> driven retries in case of data errors, hanging the IO subsystem,

This is only the case for Desktop SATA drives. More expensive
"enterprise" SATA drives (Seagate ES or ES2 series, Hitachi Ultrastar,
etc) behave like SAS drives.
Desktop SATA drives also lack the logic to manage properly vibrations
happening in large arrays, which can totally kill performance.

-- 
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Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Andreas Hasenkopf]

Hello,
since today I have quite a big problem and I'd like to get some opinions
from experts on how to proceed in solving the problem.

The Problem:
Since today mounting and unmounting of any XFS partition on my system
takes (depending on size of partition) up to 15 minutes and more.

The system in its current configuration was working fine for over 6
months and I did not change anything recently with respect of upgrades.

I have already tried booting a Linux-LiveCD and mounting the XFS
partitions in that system: same result.
Also I have run xfs_check and xfs_repair -n on the partitions on the
RAID1 configuration: mounting still takes a lot of time (15 mins +).

The System:
Ubuntu 10.04 (64bit)
AMD Phenom 9600
Asus M3A32-MVP DELUXE with Marvel Raid Controller
1x 80GB HDD with ext3 (/boot) and xfs (/)
2x 1TB HDD in RAID1 configuration (xfs)

And now to my question:
Could my problem be a software related problem (Linux, XFS, something
else) or should I consider hardware problems?



Thanks for your time
Andi

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Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Martin Steigerwald]

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Am Dienstag 19 Oktober 2010 schrieb Andreas Hasenkopf:
> Hello,

Hi!

> since today I have quite a big problem and I'd like to get some
> opinions from experts on how to proceed in solving the problem.
> 
> The Problem:
> Since today mounting and unmounting of any XFS partition on my system
> takes (depending on size of partition) up to 15 minutes and more.
[...]
> And now to my question:
> Could my problem be a software related problem (Linux, XFS, something
> else) or should I consider hardware problems?

Anything in syslog or messages (like I/O errors or such)? Are harddisk(s) 
fine (smartctl)?

Is it fast as usual after the mount succeeds?

Ciao,
-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7

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Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Dave Chinner]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 10:44:18PM +0200, Andreas Hasenkopf wrote:
> Hello,
> since today I have quite a big problem and I'd like to get some opinions
> from experts on how to proceed in solving the problem.
> 
> The Problem:
> Since today mounting and unmounting of any XFS partition on my system
> takes (depending on size of partition) up to 15 minutes and more.

How big is the journal? (xfs_info output will tell us).

> The system in its current configuration was working fine for over 6
> months and I did not change anything recently with respect of upgrades.
> 
> I have already tried booting a Linux-LiveCD and mounting the XFS
> partitions in that system: same result.
> Also I have run xfs_check and xfs_repair -n on the partitions on the
> RAID1 configuration: mounting still takes a lot of time (15 mins +).

Was it a clean unmount, or is it doing journal replay? 

If you do:

# mount <dev> <mtpt> ; umount <mtpt> ; time mount <dev> <mtpt>

Does the second mount take 15 minutes?

> And now to my question:
> Could my problem be a software related problem (Linux, XFS, something
> else) or should I consider hardware problems?

Sounds suspiciously like failing hardware to me. Any errors in
dmesg?

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com

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Re: Question/Problem: Mounting of XFS filesystem takes a lot of time

[Michael Monnerie]

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On Dienstag, 19. Oktober 2010 Andreas Hasenkopf wrote:
> 2x 1TB HDD in RAID1 configuration (xfs)

Check your disks. I've seen harddisks dying in that way. Suddenly access 
times are horrible. Test random access I/O and compare times, not 
sequential - those might still look good.

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