xfs_freeze -f misbehaving under lenny / xfsprogs 2.9.8

Stuart Rowan
2009-03-30T10:30:44Z

Hi,

We have a backup script running on another machine that ssh's in to the
affected server and does the following:
mkdir -p /tmp/foo;
/usr/sbin/xfs_freeze -f /home;
/sbin/lvcreate -s -L 20G -n snap-shot home ;
/usr/sbin/xfs_freeze -u /home;
mount -o nouuid,ro /dev/data/snap-shot /tmp/foo;

It then rsyncs (over ssh) the data to the backup store from /tmp/foo

The above command set hangs at running "/sbin/lvcreate -s -L 20G -n
snap-shot home;"

All I/O to /home is of course blocked at this point so for example exim
starts queueing up all the mail.

As soon as I manually log in some hours later and run /usr/sbin/xfs_freeze
-u /home; ... the lvcreate succeeds, the backup runs etc.

We recently upgraded this server to lenny from etch. It is still using the
same kernel as it did with etch. The kernel is 2.6.26-bpo.1-amd64.

So this has never happened before and it occurring directly coincides with
my upgrade to lenny on Friday.

The error occurred on Friday night
Backup proceeded normally on Saturday night
The error occurred on Sunday night
This suggests to me that there's some sort of race going on?

Previous version of xfsprogs (using etch): 2.8.11-1
Current version of xfsprogs (using lenny): 2.9.8-1lenny1

Anyone have any thoughts / is this a known issue with the 2.9.8 release?

Kind regards,
Stu.