XFS Filesystem not mounting

XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Hello all,

Pardon the cross post...

I have an XFS filesystem (not my root filesystem) on an OpenSuSE system that
is not mounting.

We had a power failure over the weekend. All but one of our XFS mounts is
comming up. Its a large mount (2TB) and I am not seeing errors per se...

But after attempting to mount it, it has been 4 hours and all we see in
either dmesg output or in the messages file from the kernel is:

"Starting FXS recovery on filesystem: sdd1 (logdev: internal)"

Our mount process is dead and I don't see any disk i/o going on. Am I
missing something here on this?

I rebooted the box once earlier and was able mount read-only with
norecovery...

I tried xfs_check and it also produced a dead "xfs_df -i -p xfs_check -c
check /dev/sdd1"

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks!! -Peter.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Dave Chinner]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 04:45:23PM -0700, pbrunnen wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Pardon the cross post...
> 
> I have an XFS filesystem (not my root filesystem) on an OpenSuSE system that
> is not mounting.

What kernel version is that?

> We had a power failure over the weekend. All but one of our XFS mounts is
> comming up. Its a large mount (2TB) and I am not seeing errors per se...

What sort of hardware is it on? (raid controller, raid level, etc)

> But after attempting to mount it, it has been 4 hours and all we see in
> either dmesg output or in the messages file from the kernel is:
> 
> "Starting FXS recovery on filesystem: sdd1 (logdev: internal)"
> 
> Our mount process is dead and I don't see any disk i/o going on. Am I
> missing something here on this?

There's a good chance your storage is in a bad state. Can you send the output
of "echo w > /proc/sysrq-trigger" when the system is hung?

> I rebooted the box once earlier and was able mount read-only with
> norecovery...
> 
> I tried xfs_check and it also produced a dead "xfs_df -i -p xfs_check -c
> check /dev/sdd1"

Definitely sounding like a hardware issue - once again can you post
the output of the above sysrq command when it is hung there?

Cheers,

Dave.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Hi Dave,


> What kernel version is that?
1.6.18.2-34-smp 32bit PAE

> What sort of hardware is it on? (raid controller, raid level, etc)
Hardware looks good...  Its an LSI MegaRaid (PERC 5/E) SAS controller.  The
RAID 6 passes all the hardware diags, no failed disks, and latest firmware.

The other xfs volumes on the array are fine, btw.

> There's a good chance your storage is in a bad state. Can you send the
> output
> of "echo w > /proc/sysrq-trigger" when the system is hung?

Working on that...
Just copying the data off from the norecovery mount.  Will let you know what
i find when its done copying.


FYI... I noticed a typo in my original post.
"xfs_df -i -p xfs_check -c check /dev/sdd1"
...should actually read...
"xfs_db -i -p xfs_check -c check /dev/sdd1"


Thanks so much for your help!
-Cheers, Peter.

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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Dave,

> There's a good chance your storage is in a bad state. Can you send the
> output
> of "echo w > /proc/sysrq-trigger" when the system is hung?

I issued your command this after running 'mount /dev/sdd1 /data'

dmesg outputs:
XFS mounting filesystem sdd1
Starting XFS recovery on filesystem: sdd1 (logdev: internal)
SysRq : HELP : loglevel0-8 reBoot Crashdump tErm Full kIll saK showMem Nice
powerOff showPc unRaw Sync showTasks Unmount 


Not much... nothing on the command line appears.

>From ps ax, here are my dead processes:

 1909 ?        S<     0:04 [xfslogd/0]
 1910 ?        S<     0:39 [xfsdatad/0]
10044 tty1     D+     0:00 mount /dev/sdd1 /data/
10045 ?        S<     0:00 [xfsbufd]


Thanks again so very much!

-Cheers, Peter.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Dave Chinner]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 09:43:51PM -0700, pbrunnen wrote:
> 
> Dave,
> 
> > There's a good chance your storage is in a bad state. Can you send the
> > output
> > of "echo w > /proc/sysrq-trigger" when the system is hung?
> 
> I issued your command this after running 'mount /dev/sdd1 /data'
> 
> dmesg outputs:
> XFS mounting filesystem sdd1
> Starting XFS recovery on filesystem: sdd1 (logdev: internal)
> SysRq : HELP : loglevel0-8 reBoot Crashdump tErm Full kIll saK showMem Nice
> powerOff showPc unRaw Sync showTasks Unmount 
> 
> 
> Not much... nothing on the command line appears.

Yeah, your kernel is so old it doesn't support that function. Use
"echo t > /proc/sysrq-trigger". Hunt through the output for the
stack trace associated with th ehung mount/xfs-check process.

Cheers,

Dave.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Michael Monnerie]

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On Dienstag, 14. September 2010 pbrunnen wrote:
> > What kernel version is that?
> 
> 1.6.18.2-34-smp 32bit PAE
 
I guess that should be 2.6.18 ;-)
So it sould like a very old and outdated openSUSE 10.x that doesn't 
receive any updates since a long time. You should upgrade.

The xfsprogs you have will be very, very old too. Try downloading the 
latest version. Also, can you install an actual kernel? I'm not a dev, 
but there's a lot of activity going on in XFS, and trying the newest 
kernel and newest xfsprogs often helps.

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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Emmanuel Florac]

Le Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:40:13 +0200 vous écriviez:

> The xfsprogs you have will be very, very old too. Try downloading the 
> latest version. Also, can you install an actual kernel? 

I would simply use a recent live CD, like ubuntu, to run xfs_repair
from it with a more current version.

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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Hello all...
   First and foremost I want to say Thank You to everyone for the sounding
board.  Yesterday was a bit panicky for me.  ;-)

   Time was not my friend and I ended up having to try the route that
Emmanuel suggested by rebuilding the log with "xfs_repair -L"...   Tried to
avoid it until the end.


Hi Dave,
  Yea... that was supposed to be 2.6.18...  I really like to date myself. 
;-)
I will keep note of that command though... If I ever see this again I can
get the right info faster.


Hi Michael,
  Yes, its based on 10.2...  The kernel is one of the only things not
updated.  I really don't like the newer builds of SuSE as much and have been
reluctant to upgrade.  I am considering to build a newer kernel or switch to
debian.


Again Thank you Dave, Michael, and Emmanuel for your input!
Your time is Very Much appreciated.  :-)

-Cheers, Peter.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Michael Monnerie]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 1371 bytes --]

On Dienstag, 14. September 2010 pbrunnen wrote:
> Hello all...
>    First and foremost I want to say Thank You to everyone for the
>  sounding board.  Yesterday was a bit panicky for me.  ;-)
> 
>    Time was not my friend and I ended up having to try the route that
> Emmanuel suggested by rebuilding the log with "xfs_repair -L"...  
>  Tried to avoid it until the end.

And did it work out finally? Was a destroyed log the problem?

>   Yes, its based on 10.2...  The kernel is one of the only things not
> updated.  I really don't like the newer builds of SuSE as much and
>  have been reluctant to upgrade.  I am considering to build a newer
>  kernel or switch to debian.

I'm currently on 11.2, and must say it's the best I ever worked with. 
Especially upgrading is so fast, smooth and easy now (in-place upgrade) 
that it really makes fun. Didn't have time to upgrade to 11.3, I just 
did a fresh install of it once and it looked even better (desktop 
version on a notebook).

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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Stan Hoeppner]

Michael Monnerie put forth on 9/14/2010 9:03 AM:

> I'm currently on 11.2, and must say it's the best I ever worked with. 
> Especially upgrading is so fast, smooth and easy now (in-place upgrade) 
> that it really makes fun. Didn't have time to upgrade to 11.3, I just 
> did a fresh install of it once and it looked even better (desktop 
> version on a notebook).

I've been using Debian for headless servers for many years.
Distribution upgrades via apt-get or aptitude have been smooth and easy
for many years.  I have one server that's been in-place upgraded from
Woody through Lenny with only minor dependency issues--that's 4
distribution upgrades over 5 years--Woody, Sarge, Etch, Lenny.

Then again, I don't use Debian kernels, so my kernels were never
upgraded during the dist upgrade.  This may have prevented some
headaches.  I roll my own kernels from kernel.org source and tend to
keep fairly current.  So, when I do a dist upgrade my current kernel is
usually newer than what the dist upgrade provides.  The fact I leave out
features I don't need may play a role in preventing problems as well.

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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Michael Monnerie-5 wrote:
> 
> And did it work out finally? Was a destroyed log the problem?
> 

Thankfully, yes.  Only minor damage. -- stat logs being updated at the time
of failure.


Michael Monnerie-5 wrote:
> 
> I'm currently on 11.2, and must say it's the best I ever worked with. 
> Especially upgrading is so fast, smooth and easy now (in-place upgrade) 
> that it really makes fun. Didn't have time to upgrade to 11.3, I just 
> did a fresh install of it once and it looked even better (desktop 
> version on a notebook).
> 

No doubt on the desktop/laptop side of things.  I am on the server side and
the little things that I used to love (full automation of chroot jails for
daemons, etc) have really been geared now for end users (network manager)
and less for servers.  Can't blame them... they want to sell SLES.

Ah well... Its been over a year and I still can't make up my mind.  :-P

Thanks!  -Cheers, Peter.
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Re: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Hi Stan,


Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> 
> I've been using Debian for headless servers for many years.
> Distribution upgrades via apt-get or aptitude have been smooth and easy
> for many years.  I have one server that's been in-place upgraded from
> Woody through Lenny with only minor dependency issues--that's 4
> distribution upgrades over 5 years--Woody, Sarge, Etch, Lenny.
> 

Part of my reasoning for looking towards debian is because I was forced into
it about two years ago.  I manage a solution for one of my company partners
which is based on etch with backported kernels.  There are many things I
like about it... and I agree on the clean upgrade path and very good package
management.

But the downsides to debian have been holding me back...
1) I miss yast.  aptitude is just not the same.
2) Vendor support is officially non-existant.  We are a Dell shop and
upgrading openmanage is a pain. With SuSE its download and go.
3) I understand the ideology and legal reasons debian removes firmware blobs
(broadcom anyone) from their kernel modules...  but this is always a real
pain.  I end up monkeying about with the initrd image to get the firmware
blobs in... and often I just recompile with the blobs and forget it.


Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> 
> Then again, I don't use Debian kernels, so my kernels were never
> upgraded during the dist upgrade.  This may have prevented some
> headaches.  I roll my own kernels from kernel.org source and tend to
> keep fairly current.  So, when I do a dist upgrade my current kernel is
> usually newer than what the dist upgrade provides.  The fact I leave out
> features I don't need may play a role in preventing problems as well.
> 

;-)  That makes a huge difference.  But generally my experience thus far
with debian has been positive.  Enough to make me consider switching.   And
I know the XFS has never given me a lick of trouble.

*Didn't want to seem off topic.  Had to throw in the XFS reference at the
end.  lol.

Thanks again for everyone's input.
Its Much Appreciated!
-Cheers, Peter.
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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Stan Hoeppner]

pbrunnen put forth on 9/14/2010 11:35 AM:

> But the downsides to debian have been holding me back...
> 1) I miss yast.  aptitude is just not the same.

I prefer apt-get/aptitude because they are not menu driven. I can see
how this could be an issue to someone who's been using a menu driven
package manager for a while.

> 2) Vendor support is officially non-existant.  

For Debian?  Not true.  See below.

> We are a Dell shop and
> upgrading openmanage is a pain. With SuSE its download and go.

No surprise there.  Dell has been in the Wintel pocket for years.  They
were the last tier 1 server vendor to offer AMD processors and the last
to offer Linux support of any kind and were only able to do so when
antitrust focus landed on both Intel and MS.  If not for that Dell still
probably wouldn't offer AMD/Linux.

HP on the other hand supports RedHat, SuSE, _and_ Debian:

http://h20219.www2.hp.com/services/us/en/consolidated/os-debian.html

Debian	9x5 or 24x7 coverage with maximum 2-hour response

> 3) I understand the ideology and legal reasons debian removes firmware blobs
> (broadcom anyone) from their kernel modules...  but this is always a real
> pain.  I end up monkeying about with the initrd image to get the firmware
> blobs in... and often I just recompile with the blobs and forget it.

Ran into this long ago, and it's one of the reasons I roll my own.  I
include the big blob in my kernels.  For _all_ the driver blobs it only
adds a couple hundred KB to the kernel image, and it's more than worth
the memory consumption to gain the reduced PITA factor.

> ;-)  That makes a huge difference.  But generally my experience thus far
> with debian has been positive.  Enough to make me consider switching.   And
> I know the XFS has never given me a lick of trouble.

I've only been using XFS for about a year now, and I've had zero
problems.  One of my favorite features is xfs_fsr.  Dovecot IMAP with
mbox storage causes serious fragmentation with large mailboxes.  There
is no ability to defrag files online with EXT2/3, Reiser, or JFS, so
this really comes in handy.

Keeping user mbox files defragged increases responsiveness and decreases
load on the servers.  Switching to maildir storage would help
considerably with fragmentation, but, my users make serious use of IMAP
search.  Searching an mmap'd 50MB mbox file containing 10k+ messages is
_much_ faster than searching each of 10k+ files in an equivalent maildir
subfolder, regardless of the underlying FS.  Indexing obviously speeds
this up tremendously in either case, but without frequent (daily)
searches the indexes become stale due to new mail being added, so full
searches of the mailboxes are frequent.

> *Didn't want to seem off topic.  Had to throw in the XFS reference at the
> end.  lol.

Yeah, you/we probably should have made a new subject line when forking
the thread.

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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Emmanuel Florac]

Le Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:03:02 -0500 vous écriviez:

> > ;-)  That makes a huge difference.  But generally my experience
> > thus far with debian has been positive.  Enough to make me consider
> > switching.   And I know the XFS has never given me a lick of
> > trouble.  
> 
> I've only been using XFS for about a year now, and I've had zero
> problems. 

I've used XFS only since 1996 and never looked back - I
still actually miss those sturdy Origin 200 and 2000 :) I've set up
about 2.5 PB of XFS filesystems in the past 5 years so I think it's
quite a significant metric.

On the other hand I had some problems (fortunately nothing
irremediable) on reiser, ext3 though I used them only sparsely.
Obviously XFS is much more resilient to hardware glitches (I even
recovered most of the data from a RAID-0 array with a failed drive).

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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Dave Chinner]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 01:03:02PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> pbrunnen put forth on 9/14/2010 11:35 AM:
> > 3) I understand the ideology and legal reasons debian removes firmware blobs
> > (broadcom anyone) from their kernel modules...  but this is always a real
> > pain.  I end up monkeying about with the initrd image to get the firmware
> > blobs in... and often I just recompile with the blobs and forget it.
> 
> Ran into this long ago, and it's one of the reasons I roll my own.  I
> include the big blob in my kernels.  For _all_ the driver blobs it only
> adds a couple hundred KB to the kernel image, and it's more than worth
> the memory consumption to gain the reduced PITA factor.

You must be doing it wrong, then.

# apt-cache search "^firmware-"
....

Pick the packages for your hardware, or just install the lot (which
is what I normally do) and remake your initramfs. The firmware
packages have the correct firmware versions the distro kernels
expect.

If you run custom kernels, the after building it without the
firmware built in, just run 'make firmware_install' before building
your new initramfs and everything will just work fine.

Cheers,

Dave.
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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Hi Steve,


Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>  I can see how this could be an issue to someone who's been using a menu
> driven package manager for a while.
Call me spoiled... ;-)


Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> > 2) Vendor support is officially non-existant.
>   For Debian?  Not true.  See below.
Ok, I give you that.  Not supported by Our vendor is more
accurate.Unfortunately you could not give me an HP box... Too many bad
experiences.


Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> I've only been using XFS for about a year now, and I've had zeroproblems. 
> One of my favorite features is xfs_fsr.  Dovecot IMAP withmbox storage
> causes serious fragmentation with large mailboxes.  Thereis no ability to
> defrag files online with EXT2/3, Reiser, or JFS, sothis really comes in
> handy.
I hear you there.  We are standardized on it for five years now.  I can't
speak highly enough of it. I like it because its generally the fastest
filesystem overall with all the different kinds of storage we have (size,
heavy file i/o, and databases).  It scales really big and can grow online...
some of our luns are in the 30TB range.  Agreed on the online fragmentation
too... Happy to say this is only the second time ever that I ran
xfs_repair... and the first time was on my old failing laptop drive, so that
really doesn't count for much.

-Cheers, Peter.
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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Emmanuel Florac wrote:
> 
> I've used XFS only since 1996 and never looked back - I
> still actually miss those sturdy Origin 200 and 2000 :) I've set up
> about 2.5 PB of XFS filesystems in the past 5 years so I think it's
> quite a significant metric.
> 
> On the other hand I had some problems (fortunately nothing
> irremediable) on reiser, ext3 though I used them only sparsely.
> Obviously XFS is much more resilient to hardware glitches (I even
> recovered most of the data from a RAID-0 array with a failed drive).
> 
2.5PB... Wow... Those are some of the best points of why to use XFS.  Those
are really impressive...

Always was intrigued by the SGI equipment in the labs when I was at
University...  Never played with one though.  Checked out the specs of those
Origin boxes you mention.  That was some horsepower for the time.

-Cheers, Peter.
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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Stan Hoeppner]

Dave Chinner put forth on 9/14/2010 7:44 PM:

> You must be doing it wrong, then.
> 
> # apt-cache search "^firmware-"
> ....
> 
> Pick the packages for your hardware, or just install the lot (which
> is what I normally do) and remake your initramfs. The firmware
> packages have the correct firmware versions the distro kernels
> expect.

IIRC it's a bit more complex than this Dave, unfortunately.  The
firmware issues in Debian almost always revolve around NICs and
free/non-free blobs.  The most recent example was the RTL8111/8168 blob
relating to the 2.6.32-trunk kernel, IIRC.

People upgraded their Debian kernels and their NICs didn't work
afterward, because the Debian team had changed the blob from free to
non-free.  Non-free blobs aren't installed automatically, so as soon as
they rebooted after installing the kernel image and initrd, they had no
network access.  If one didn't already have the firmware files on the
machine, many didn't IIRC, there was no way to grab them from the
mirrors as the NIC was offline--instant catch 22.

This caused one heck of a row on debian-user--because Realtek eth chips
are everywhere--that lasted over two weeks IIRC.  There was no clear cut
easily findable Debian documentation on how to remedy this.  Many, many
OPs ran out an bought Intel NICs so they wouldn't have to fight this and
could get back up quickly, and so they'd (hopefully) never have to deal
with something like this again.

All of this, AIUI, because Debian and the upstream didn't get the right
"free" documentation in time from Realtek.  All other Realtek firmware
was free AFAIK, always has been AFAIK, and there'd never been an issue.
 This Debian kernel upgrade snafu caused a lot of pain for a lot of OPs,
needlessly.  Many defected to Ubuntu over this single issue, curse words
flying and all.

> If you run custom kernels, the after building it without the
> firmware built in, just run 'make firmware_install' before building
> your new initramfs and everything will just work fine.

This assumes one is using kernel.org source, correct, not Debian kernel
source?  Yes, then it should work fine.  I believe it's a bit more
complex with Debian kernel source due to the way free/non-free
drivers/blobs are handled by Debian.  Which is a shame really, because
myself and many others really really like Debian.  I still do.  I just
mitigate or work around these types of issues myself. :)

As I previously stated, I build in the firmware blobs.  I also build in
all device drivers the system will need, and thus I don't use an initrd,
ever.  In fact, I've never used modules, and thus I remove loadable
module support from the kernel to save space.  Most of my kernel images
run about 1.5 MB with a system map of 500 KB.  I'm always looking for
things to leave out that aren't needed to decrease kernel size.  And
yes, I still use LILO--til they pry it from my cold dead hands. :)

-- 
Stan

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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[Stan Hoeppner]

pbrunnen put forth on 9/14/2010 8:07 PM:

> Always was intrigued by the SGI equipment in the labs when I was at
> University...  Never played with one though.  Checked out the specs of those
> Origin boxes you mention.  That was some horsepower for the time.

Some years ago NCSA was selling off some retired 128P O2K systems really
really cheap.  I was only about 4 hours away from Urbana Champaign at
the time and was really tempted.  I was planning on running _lots_ of
seti@home processes on it, mainly.  ;)

The price was really decent for what I'd be getting, but in the end I
just couldn't justify it, no matter how cool it would have been to have
a dual rack 32P SGI Origin 2000 running in the basement, crunching S@H.

The reality check was that I could build a new 4U quad Xeon box at the
time, of about the same overall performance, and with lots more disk,
for a mere fraction of the cost of the used O2K.  It wouldn't have the
cool SGI badge or run IRIX, but I wouldn't have to add 220v circuits in
the basement, or acquire a big 220v UPS, or pay a much larger monthly
electric bill.

A single socket 12-core 2 GHz Opteron 6100 series on a SuperMicro mobo
with quad DDR3 memory channels w/32 GB RAM, sitting on your desktop,
would simply run circles around that old 2 rack 32P O2K system, probably
5 to 1 or greater in parallel linpack--for less than $2k.

-- 
Stan



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Re: Now: Debian issues, WAS: XFS Filesystem not mounting

[pbrunnen]

Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> 
> A single socket 12-core 2 GHz Opteron 6100 series on a SuperMicro mobo
> with quad DDR3 memory channels w/32 GB RAM, sitting on your desktop,
> would simply run circles around that old 2 rack 32P O2K system, probably
> 5 to 1 or greater in parallel linpack--for less than $2k.
> 
:-)  Now... not then.  We often forget how much has changed even over just
the last 10 years.




Dave Chinner wrote:
> 
> You must be doing it wrong, then.
> 
> # apt-cache search "^firmware-"
> ....
> 
> Pick the packages for your hardware, or just install the lot (which
> is what I normally do) and remake your initramfs. The firmware
> packages have the correct firmware versions the distro kernels
> expect.
> 
Hi Dave.

I have to agree with Stan...  I know about the firmware packages... but for
both the Broadcom BXN2 nics and the Q-Logic QLA23xx HBAs I have never gotten
the firmware bundle to work properly.  I always ended up with a 5min boot
delay as the modules couldn't find the firmware files.  So I build my own
modules with the blobs inside and life is good...

Thanks.  -Cheers, Peter.
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