[DRBD-user] System lockup with DRBD

Digimer linux at alteeve.com
Sun Nov 7 06:12:11 CET 2010

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


On 10-11-07 12:46 AM, chambal wrote:
> Thanks for the help.  At the "modprobe drbd" step, the watch
> window began showing:
> 
> version: 8.3.7 (api:88/proto:86-92)
> srcversion: 582E47DEE6FD9EC45926ECF
> 
> And syslog showed:
> 
> Nov  6 21:31:35 f13-1 kernel: drbd: initialized. Version: 8.3.7
> (api:88/proto:86-92)
> Nov  6 21:31:35 f13-1 kernel: drbd: srcversion: 582E47DEE6FD9EC45926ECF
> Nov  6 21:31:35 f13-1 kernel: drbd: registered as block device major 147
> Nov  6 21:31:35 f13-1 kernel: drbd: minor_table @ 0xf6280d80
> 
> Then at the "drbadadm attach r0" step, it crashed.  Nothing
> showed in the syslog or watch windows (it crashed instantly).
> After reboot, nothing in syslog after the above lines, until the
> new boot messages.

So that rules out network issues. That's the step where it should start
talking to that hardware. What is the underlying hardware, exactly? I
know it's an Epia board... Can I guess these are very old models?

I've used DRBD extensively in the last several months on a wide array of
hardware (~$300 test nodes to $6k+ servers) and have had problems, but
never crashes like that. Does the crash happen on both nodes? What else
is using the underlying disks?

On a hunch, I am going to guess it's a problem with the driver for the
storage controller. To help confirm or rule out, how much can you
simplify your nodes? I don't have a lot of experience with 32 bit these
days, double so with PAE. Can you drop to <3GB of RAM and not use PAE as
a test? Is there any odd or exotic hardware you can remove?

I'd also be a bit curious to see if there is a difference should you
take two drives, make a software RAID 1 array and then use the /dev/mdX
device as the backing device. That makes it admittedly more complex, but
perhaps might act as a buffer between DRBD and the storage.

Can you copy your setup to a different set of hardware, again to test?

I'm throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks...

-- 
Digimer
E-Mail: digimer at alteeve.com
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