[Xen-users] blktap2, also broken in current pv_ops stable-2.6.32.x?

["Heiko Wundram" <modelnine@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey!

As I've already written about two days ago, I'm having major trouble getting
blktap2 to work properly. After trying xen-sources-2.6.32-xen-r1 from Gentoo
(where Andrew Lyon, the maintainer, has already confirmed that he's hitting
the same problem as me, i.e. the blktap2 driver is dysfunctional in the
kernel), I decided to give a pv_ops-Kernel a try, and checked out and
compiled the current xen/stable-2.6.32.x branch.

Blktap2 seemed to be working properly (at least I thought so yesterday
evening, testing it with the two hosts that are currently productively
running on the upgraded Dom0, both of which are PV and i386), but after
having given AMD64 Ubuntu a spin at installing today, I'm hitting a similar
problem to what I'm seeing with the SLES sources: after a certain
amount/speed of I/O from the (HVM-)DomU, the system becomes unstable.

I'm not getting much sensible debugging info, because sometimes I'm hitting
a "Kernel BUG, invalid opcode (in block-core.c)" in the Dom0, but the system
still reacts somewhat (can be rebooted), sometimes nothing shows up on the
Dom0 logs, but the xm tools don't react anymore and a reboot is impossible,
sometimes the host completely freezes.

I've given up on blktap2 for the moment, and returned to simple
"phy"-devices for now (which seem to be running smoothly) so that my hosts
(and my mailserver) can actually do some work; anyway, I guess my general
question would be if there's actually anyone out there who's productively
using blktap2, and for whom it works properly. Any answer would matter to
me, as I'm currently evaluating whether I should actually test a little more
(I haven't started comparing the kernel config that I'm using for the pv_ops
kernel against the respective config samples, that'd be a route to go to
check whether I'm simply building a broken kernel), or rather let things sit
as they are.

Thanks for any feedback!

--- Heiko.




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