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Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 16:41:52 -0400
From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
To: John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org>
Cc: David Watson <kernel-nospam@dbwatson.ukfsn.org>,
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Subject: Re: [Bug #13232] ext3/4 with synchronous writes gets wedged by
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On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 02:27:14PM -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
> I wonder if this is the reason my main file server has been locking up
> solid under 2.6.29 or newer kernels lately, but 2.6.28 is rock solid.
> Since it's my main file server at home, and with my home dir NFS
> mounted from it onto another system, it's been hard to catch.  I spent
> some time fiddling around getting netconsole setup, but then I ran out
> of time.

Unless you have your partition mounted with the "sync" mount option
(which has negative performance implifications; it makes sense for a
mail queue directory, but not necessarily for a general purpose file
server) or you have a directory chattr'ed with the sync flag, probably
not...

If you want to try it, though, the patch is available here:

   http://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.cgi?id=21436

> If someone could send me the patch, I'll apply it and see how well
> 2.6.29.[34] works, and whether or not 2.6.30-rcN works as well.
> Reproducing the problem was pretty easy for me.  

Anything on the console?  Any oops messages, or soft lockup warnings?

What filesystem(s) are you using? 


						- Ted