[Xen-devel] xenconsoled needs restart after long dom0 uptime otherwise domU console output hangs and domU doesn't come up

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

Hello list!

I've noticed this problem a couple of times now.. so I'm wondering if it's a
known bug? 

Symptoms:

After "long" dom0 uptime (174 days when it happened now, was something
similar on previous times too) cannot start new pv domUs anymore.. 
pygrub runs and boots the kernel, but kernel newer gets to actually running 
initrd
and the console output hangs/stalls..

"xm console" output might look like this:

checking if image is initramfs... it is
Freeing initrd memory: 12028k freed
Grant table initialized
NET: Registered protocol family 16
SMP alternatives: switching to SMP code
<hangs here, nothing happens anymore>

The point where it hangs might be a couple of lines earlier or later.. seems
to change on almost every run..

"xm list" in dom0 shows the domU as "-b----" and the Time(s) stays at 1.9..
after 8 hours of being hanged/stalled Time(s) was at 5.0 for that domU, but
the console output had not changed, and the domU was still non-functional.

Already running domUs keep running fine when this happens.. 

Solution:

This problem gets fixed when you kill xenconsoled in dom0, and restart it. After
this new domUs can be started just fine, and everything works normally
again. "xm console" works, initrd is executed, domU comes up OK, and you see
the full console output.

I've seen this happening on dom0s running RHEL/CentOS 5.0 (Xen 3.0.3) and 
RHEL/CentOS 5.1 (Xen 3.1.0). 

I just upgraded to 5.2 so can't tell (yet) if it happens with Xen 3.1.2.

I'm running 32bit x86 PAE, and the domU kernels in question are Debian etch
2.6.18-6-xen-686. I think it also happens RHEL/CentOS 5.x kernel-xen, but
not totally sure about that. I think I also saw it with Fedora 8/9
domU kernel-xen once.

Looks like a bug in xenconsoled.. 

-- Pasi

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