From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michal Novotny Subject: Re: [PATCH] Introduce dom0-min-space configuration option Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:23:14 +0200 Message-ID: <4C3D9E22.3030302@redhat.com> References: <4C3B59FE.2060201@redhat.com> <19516.43557.723062.885082@mariner.uk.xensource.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <19516.43557.723062.885082@mariner.uk.xensource.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com To: Ian Jackson Cc: "'xen-devel@lists.xensource.com'" List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org On 07/13/2010 08:02 PM, Ian Jackson wrote: > Michal Novotny writes ("[Xen-devel] [PATCH] Introduce dom0-min-space configuration option"): > >> This is the patch to introduce configuration option called >> dom0-min-space since there were some issues with data inflation >> because of invalid input data stream for zlib decompression. >> The issue occured because of insufficient free space on the dom0 so >> this patch checks the free available space for /var/lib/xen >> and refuses to start up any guests when the space is below >> specified value. Setting up the value to 0 disables the check >> which preserves the behaviour before this patch applied and >> this is the default value for this option. >> > Thanks for the patch, but I'm not sure I entirely follow. > > What "issues with data inflation because of invalid input data stream > for zlib decompression" were there and how do they relate to lack of > space on /var/lib/xen ? > Ian, the problem is when pygrub extracts the vmlinuz and initrd for PV guests but there's insufficient space on the dom0, there's no error message but the error is being raised from Xend itself, libxc to be precise since there's the zStream inflation code but since the input data are not valid (i.e. they're just partial, let's say only 50 KiB was extracted to /var/lib/xen since after those 50 KiBs the dom0 had no space available) the zStream (zlib decompression) fails with Z_BUF_ERROR and then it outputs annoying and nothing saying message to standalone users (non-developers) to doesn't do investigation on their own. This patch would prevent going into those issues since there would be always at least specified amount of free space available for PV images to be extracted to /var/lib/xen . > Is this just for the situation where the dom0 filesystem hasn't enough > space to contain the uncompressed version of the domU kernel and > initrd which are to be loaded ? > Well, this is for compressed version being extracted from the guest image files. This is being saved to /var/lib/xen and if there's not enough space to save it the deflation fails with -5 (Z_BUF_ERROR) which says nothing to standalone users. > Your patch just raises an error. Why does the situation in which the > patch is needed not already raise an appropriate error ? Perhaps it > would be better to arrange that it does. > Well, the reason is that there should be multiple reasons that could make the decompression (gunzip) fail. Also, having the dom0 with no space could cause some other (non-Xen) related errors so having this option could prevent user running into those issues - mainly if the user's saving images to the default location, i.e. /var/lib/xen/images, he/she can get running out of free space on dom0 very easily. Michal -- Michal Novotny, RHCE Virtualization Team (xen userspace), Red Hat