Re: [Xen-users] Possible bug with scsi disk and Xen

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 07:03:16PM +0100, Jordan Pittier wrote:
> Thanks for your reply. LSI has indeed newer driver for the controler;
> but I can't "build" it, there's an error when I try to compile it [see
> attachement]. I will give another try in the next days.
> 
> What is puzzling is that the IO errors only occurs with Xen HV. I am
> 100% willing to accept that the problem is the drivers, but how come
> the exact same kernel (the xenified one) could work fine without Xen
> loaded ? I am almost a noob in kernel/driver and stuff; but I thought
> the drivers were entirely in the kernel.
> 

Yep, the driver is entirely in the kernel, but that's not the whole story.

Xen dom0 kernel does irq handling through Xen hypervisor,
so that might make some drivers behave in a different way baremetal vs. dom0.

Also remember dom0 is a *vm*, so some timing stuff might happen
differently on baremetal vs. dom0.

> I will try with the latest kernel in a few days.
> 
> SLES11SP1 ships mptfusion 4.22
> (http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/11-SP1/#driver-updates-storage)
> I dont know for RHEL
> 

What driver version does the squeeze kernel have? 


-- Pasi


> On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 6:02 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 04:27:25PM +0100, Jordan Pittier wrote:
> >>    Hi,
> >>    I have been tracking a bug affecting all my servers running Debian 
> >> Squeeze
> >>    for more than a month now, and I*desperately*need your help :)*
> >>    I have 10 Sun v20z servers (2*66GB SCSI disk in RAID 1 == mirror). 4 of
> >>    them are running Debian Squeeze with the latest Xen Debian kernel
> >>    (2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 ==*2.6.32-29). The rest are running Debian Lenny
> >>    (2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 ==*2.6.26-26lenny1).
> >>    On a Squeeze boxe, under very high IO (such as running a IO stress test,
> >>    ie bonnie++), server starts behaving*weirdly and I see messages like 
> >> these
> >>    in kernel.log : [see attachement]. Then the server becomes totally
> >>    unresponsive (but doesn't "freeze") and commands such as "ls" or 
> >> "reboot"
> >>    don't work anymore. I have to do an hard reboot. After the server has
> >>    reboot, the RAID array seems degraded (I am using the mpt-status 
> >> command)
> >>    and starts rebuilding. After several hours, the raid array is "fine"
> >>    ("clean"). The raid controler is "LSI53C1030" U320, with driver "Fusion
> >>    MPT SPI Host driver 3.04.06". I have attached the result of "lsmod".
> >>    None of my Lenny boxes are affected by this issue, all of my Squeeze 
> >> boxes
> >>    are.
> >>    What does it have to do with Xen ? When I boot my Squeeze boxes without
> >>    the Xen hypervisor but the same Xen kernel, bonnie++ 
> >> runs*absolutely*fine.
> >>    The issue appears only with the Xen hypervisor loaded.*
> >>    There is a debian bug report for this
> >>    :*[1]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=603727
> >>    Any suggestion ?*
> >
> > Did you check if LSI has newer driver version available?
> >
> > Also you might check which driver version for example RHEL6
> > or SLES11SP1 ships with.. both of those distros have 2.6.32 kernels too.
> >
> > On one of my testboxes I need to upgrade the LSI driver
> > to a newer version to make it work. This is SAS based LSI though.
> >
> > Can you try using another disk controller?
> >
> > Also: Did you try using the latest kernel (-30) ?
> >
> > -- Pasi
> >
> >

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users