Re: Debian 10, xen 4.11 reliability

[Sarah Newman <srn@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/14/20 2:00 AM, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> On 7/14/20 1:16 AM, Adam Goryachev wrote:
> > On 14/7/20 03:02, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> > > Hi Casper,
> > >
> > > On 7/9/20 10:45 AM, Casper wrote:
> > > > [...]
> > > > Or problem with Debian Xen package as it not so popular anymore?
> > > > Any suggestion what to test to figure out problem?
> > BTW, I don't think is a general rule that Debian 10.4 with packages Xen
> > 4.11 doesn't work.
> True. It just works (tm), until you have some edge case hardware that
> misbehaves, or you run into an edge case bug with a very specific
> combination of non-default configuration here and there (or when you try
> to use EFI, cough).
>
> So, to add to the list:
> * Run latest BIOS / cpu microcode that is available.
> * Other firmware, e.g. for raid controller or whatever?
> * Is the box using ECC memory? I mean, even a memory module that flips a
> bit now and then can crash a server every few weeks... Run a memtest or
> 7zip benchmark or what was the thing that's very good at exposing memory
> errors...
>
> Also, feel free to open a bug report in the Debian bug tracker, we're
> willing to help, but expect that you have to do the work to gather all
> info. I don't have a similar piece of hardware lying around here... What
> distro package maintainers can do is help users to gather enough info to
> have a good report that doesn't waste too much time of the upstream
> developers.
Here is a bug I opened a week ago against Debian Buster:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=964494

It looks like only newer versions of the kernel are a problem. We think the 
trigger is either ext3 or Xen.

The problem may not show up for weeks, and we do not know what triggers it.

If anyone has more data points to add that would help isolate the issue to one 
or the other, it would be appreciated.

--Sarah