2.4.24 with the 2.4.23-xfs patches from sgi

2.4.24 with the 2.4.23-xfs patches from sgi

[Jeffrey E. Hundstad]

Hello,

In the last 48-hours we've had two machines hang with no messages on the 
console and none in the logs, pings return, drive lights are all off and 
don't ever flash.   Both machines we running linux-2.4.24 with the 
xfs-2.4.23-all-i386 patch as recommended by the XFS group.  These 
machines had been running fine on this kernel image since Jan  13, 
2004.  One machine was running XFS as a filesystem and the other was 
running EXT2.  These machines have both been in constant production for 
over 4 years and there has not been any hardware changes, including 
those to it's environment with is power and temperature controlled.

Both machines are Pentium-3 class, 256M of memory, both using SCSI disk 
with different SCSI controllers.  This is the the version string:
Linux version 2.4.24-xfs (j3gum@krypton) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 
(Debian prerelease)) #1 SMP Tue Jan 13 22:05:12 CST 2004

If you need more specific info. I'll prob. keep these and the other 
dozen on the same kernel image up for a few more days.
-- 
jeffrey hundstad

Re: 2.4.24 with the 2.4.23-xfs patches from sgi

[Marcelo Tosatti]

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Jeffrey E. Hundstad wrote:

> Hello,
>
> In the last 48-hours we've had two machines hang with no messages on the
> console and none in the logs, pings return, drive lights are all off and
> don't ever flash.   Both machines we running linux-2.4.24 with the
> xfs-2.4.23-all-i386 patch as recommended by the XFS group.  These
> machines had been running fine on this kernel image since Jan  13,
> 2004.  One machine was running XFS as a filesystem and the other was
> running EXT2.  These machines have both been in constant production for
> over 4 years and there has not been any hardware changes, including
> those to it's environment with is power and temperature controlled.
>
> Both machines are Pentium-3 class, 256M of memory, both using SCSI disk
> with different SCSI controllers.  This is the the version string:
> Linux version 2.4.24-xfs (j3gum@krypton) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002
> (Debian prerelease)) #1 SMP Tue Jan 13 22:05:12 CST 2004
>
> If you need more specific info. I'll prob. keep these and the other
> dozen on the same kernel image up for a few more days.

Hi Jeffrey,

There is a known VFS _SMP_ deadlock in 2.4.24. I'm not sure if that is
what you are hitting, but it is likely.

So try 2.4.25-pre7 (which contains an uptodated XFS tree) and check if the
problem goes away.

Please keep me informed.