[Xen-devel] xen-2.0 20040910 problems

[Peri Hankey <mpah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello

I have been experimenting with xen 2.0 and before that with xeno-unstable. It
has proved interesting and promising

However, the last few updates have been problematic. In particular it looks as
if the ext3 filesystem is not correctly handled.

I typically develop in the xen0 domain, connecting over ssh from a different
machine

Recent history:

    20040907:  occasional kernel BUGs
    20040908:  instant reboot loop when booting xen
    20040909:  mysterious filesystem problems
    20040910:  mysterious filesystem problems

The main symptoms are:
    
rpm -qa

crashes with floating point exception or otherwise dies some way into 
generating a list of installed rpms. Looked like corruption of rpm database. 
The 'rpm --rebuilddb' operation also failed, so I was investigating ways of
reconstructing the database when I encountered other problems - eg: 

mv  bla* dirname

complained that the last argument was not a directory when it quite clearly was,
as in 'mkdir newdirectory; mv bla* newdirectory;'

Neither of these problems arise when I reboot the same system using my standard
kernel (2.6.7 compiled from source). In each case I am booting into the same
environment (mandrake 10.0 community + updates, running in init level 3).

I haven't tried with any other filesystem, but have tried using gcc versions
3.3.2 and 3.4.0.

I don't know if anyone else has encountered this kind of problem.

The kernel BUG problem looks as if it may be related to preemption in the
kernel. It occurred when I had dom0 + 6 domU systems running, and would happen
both in dom0 and in the domU systems. A typcial example:

------------[ cut here ]------------
kernel BUG at mm/rmap.c:251!
invalid operand: 0000 [#1]
PREEMPT
Modules linked in:
CPU:    0
EIP:    0061:[<c0149ca9>]    Not tainted
EFLAGS: 00010246   (2.6.8.1-xenU)
EIP is at page_referenced+0x15e/0x175
eax: c2050000   ebx: c1119858   ecx: 00000f30   edx: c1c52480
esi: c1119840   edi: c1c52480   ebp: 00000000   esp: c2051e4c
ds: 0069   es: 0069   ss: 0069
Process kswapd0 (pid: 18, threadinfo=c2050000 task=c204b080)
Stack: c111e600 c18360cc c2051e6c 00000009 00000009 00000009 00000000 00000000
       00000001 c2050000 c02bc9c0 00000000 c013f387 c1119858 c1119840 c02bc9c0
       c2050000 c0141207 c1119840 c02bcb08 c02bc9dc 00000001 00000020 00000020
Call Trace:
 [<c013f387>] __pagevec_release+0x25/0x30
 [<c0141207>] refill_inactive_zone+0x591/0x662
 [<c013ffbc>] shrink_slab+0x98/0x1a9
 [<c014134a>] shrink_zone+0x72/0xb6
 [<c0141784>] balance_pgdat+0x1d4/0x2b1
 [<c0141920>] kswapd+0xbf/0xc1
 [<c011a245>] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x57
 [<c010d7c6>] ret_from_fork+0x6/0x14
 [<c011a245>] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x57
 [<c0141861>] kswapd+0x0/0xc1
 [<c010ee91>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xb
Code: 0f 0b fb 00 c9 2a 29 c0 e9 08 ff ff ff e8 a0 c1 13 00 e9 53
 <6>note: kswapd0[18] exited with preempt_count 2
------------[ cut here ]------------

The following instance mentioned 'scheduling while atomic'. I can send more log
output if it would be useful - I was waiting to see if relevant-sounding
changesets had done the trick.

On a different topic, I have never yet seen the web interface work for long
enough to be useful - it always crashes with the int-text type clash that was
mentioned somewhere in the changelogs as having been fixed.

Regards
Peri Hankey







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