Bug#499833: [SOLVED] - chccwdev cannot set device offline in Lenny
I finally found the cause of this pesky bug! At some point, an aptitude full-upgrade seemed to fix this problem. But not always. The problem is that I could never come up with a consistent failure scenario. Well, today, I finally did. It turns out that, for me, the failure only occurs when using four device numbers: 0400, 0401, 0402, and 0403. When using any other device numbers, everything works fine. Searching my machine, I found four mystery files: /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config-ccw-0.0.0400 /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config-ccw-0.0.0401 /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config-ccw-0.0.0402 /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config-ccw-0.0.0403 These were all empty files, zero bytes each, the kind one would get with touch executed against a non-existent file name. There was another file in the same directory, /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config-ccw-0.0.0300 but this is for the (virtual) OSA card. It is not a DASD device. And its file size is non-zero. I'm not sure how these files got there. They may be leftovers from a process that did not complete for some reason. Anyway, I erased the files and now everything works as expected! The device does not come online automatically anymore, and when I vary the device off, it stays off! Hooray! Sorry for all your trouble. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-s390-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#499833: [SOLVED] - chccwdev cannot set device offline in Lenny
Stephen Powell wrote: I finally found the cause of this pesky bug! At some point, an aptitude full-upgrade seemed to fix this problem. That was probably at times that sysconfig-hardware was broken... A next fixed version of that package would have reintroduced your problem. The problem is that I could never come up with a consistent failure scenario. Well, today, I finally did. It turns out that, for me, the failure only occurs when using four device numbers: 0400, 0401, 0402, and 0403. When using any other device numbers, everything works fine. Searching my machine, I found four mystery files: They are not mystery files at all. They are part of sysconfig-hardware and their exact purpose is to bring up devices during system boot! They were almost certainly created when you installed the system because you selected at that time to activate the devices. These were all empty files, zero bytes each, the kind one would get with touch executed against a non-existent file name. The files are essentially a trigger to bring the device up, so they don't need any content. But they can contain configuration settings (depending on the type of device). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-s390-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#499833: [SOLVED] - chccwdev cannot set device offline in Lenny
On Wed, 3 Feb 2010 11:53:47 -0500 (EST), Frans Pop wrote: They are not mystery files at all. They are part of sysconfig-hardware and their exact purpose is to bring up devices during system boot! I'm sure that they are no mystery to you, but they *were* a mystery to me until you explained their purpose. I knew next to nothing about sysconfig-hardware, except that it configured the OSA during boot. Now I know a little more. They were almost certainly created when you installed the system because you selected at that time to activate the devices. That makes sense. That is how I did my first migration of data from cdl minidisks to CMS minidisks: with the installer. However, after migrating I deleted 0200-0203 and renamed 0400-0403 to 0200-0203. This change was made in the CP directory entry for the virtual machine in z/VM. This change was made without the knowledge of sysconfig-hardware. So whenever a dynamically linked device showed up using one of the device numbers 0400-0403, sysconfig-hardware was convinced it needed to be brought online immediately! What I don't understand is why, when it is *manually* varied offline *after* being brought online automatically, sysconfig-hardware thinks that it has to be brought right back online again! I'm not sure if this behavior is considered working as designed, but it's definitely not working as *desired*, at least not from my point of view. Nevertheless, it's easy enough to circumvent. Just delete the file. My production minidisks, 0200-0203, are brought online automatically, but in a different way. They are part of the dasd option passed to the dasd_mod module via an options record in a file called /etc/modprobe.d/dasd. This file is included in the initial RAM file system image, of course. sysconfig-hardware is not needed to bring these devices online. But if I *manually* take one of these devices offline, it *stays* offline! It is only brought online *automatically* during the boot process. (I can't get / offline while running, of course, but I can get /boot, /home, and my swap partition offline while running, if necessary.) All of this is how my Lenny system works. I haven't done a Squeeze install yet. Not on the s390 platform, that is. I will leave it up to your discretion whether to re-open this bug and assign it to sysconfig-hardware (using a more appropriate title, such as device manually varied offline comes right back on again, or some other similar title, or to leave it closed. If this problem has been fixed in Squeeze, then I'm content. And if it hasn't been, I now know how to work around it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-s390-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#499833: [SOLVED] - chccwdev cannot set device offline in Lenny
Stephen Powell wrote: So whenever a dynamically linked device showed up using one of the device numbers 0400-0403, sysconfig-hardware was convinced it needed to be brought online immediately! What I don't understand is why, when it is *manually* varied offline *after* being brought online automatically, sysconfig-hardware thinks that it has to be brought right back online again! Because sysconfig-hardware gets triggered by udev when the kernel tells udev there's a new device... When you dynamically add hardware that way I guess it's a new device for the kernel, just like inserting/removing/reinserting a USB stick in a PC. But if I *manually* take one of these devices offline, it *stays* offline! Because they don't disappear for the kernel. I will leave it up to your discretion whether to re-open this bug [...] There is no bug. Everything works as designed. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-s390-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
