On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 01:45:34PM +0800, Ian C. Sison wrote:
> Teka teka, you've dropped XFS completely? I remember you had the best
> reviews of XFS a while ago, why all of a sudden the data corruption?

Problems with Gusi, our primary do-it-all server, began to crop up
around 2002-09-30, with a message[1] I sent to both the lkml and the
linux-xfs list. Things seem to have stabilized a bit until a few days
later, with another significant message[2] I sent to the linux-xfs list
exclusively after attempts to mount our XFS volumes got stuck on boot.

[1] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-xfs&m=103338806912329&w=2
[2] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-xfs&m=103369234209733&w=2

I eventually migrated the server to ext3. I can't remember if I did it
overnight or in mid-day because of the perennial problems we suddenly
started having with XFS (this wasn't a fresh new kernel, BTW, our system
had been up and running for 51 days before the problem, and then
suddenly we just kept getting these problems during that week).

ext3 is slower than XFS, no doubt about that. I run a "poor man's" data
backup every other night, and had to adjust the time that the cron job
would start because with ext3 the work was spilling onto the next
business day which starts at 7:00am. I can sleep much better at night
with ext3, though. As soon as I had straightened things out on Gusi
using kernel 2.4.19, it kept chugging along until an extended power
outage reset the uptime last week, by which time it had been running for
110 days. I took the opportunity to upgrade to 2.4.20, and it has been
running for 7 days since then. I am hoping Meralco will allow us to
reach higher uptime peaks than our current record[3]. :)

[3] http://mrtg.leathercollection.ph/uptime.html

> Is is because you're using an unstable patch?  And if so, why not revert
> to a stable one?

Gusi had not been running an unstable patch with XFS. We were using a
fairly accepted CVS checkout, with only RML's preempt patches and Randy
Dunlop's sysmagic patch to allow me to send SysMagic commands via a
/proc interface.

Buwaya, my workstation at home, is another story. I had not been able to
revert to ext3 together with Gusi, so it still ran XFS until last week.
Lately I have been playing around with Con Kolivas's patches, which
since the patches for 2.4.20 seem to have been causing data corruption
on unmount for XFS. Everything seems to be fine with the new ext3 +
2.4.20-ck3 combination that I use at home and in my workstation here at
work.

 --> Jijo

-- 
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Network Administrator : The Leather Collection, Inc. : software we refer to
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