Bug#474500: uptimed: /var/spool/uptimed/records deleted after power fail
Package: uptimed Version: 1:0.3.10-3 Severity: normal After more than 200 days running, the server power was shut off. No big problem. After booting /var/spool/uptimed/records was gone (or overwritten) and only the current boot is now visible. Is the file opened at start and closed on normal shutdown (whith start-stop-daemon)? I suggest to open the file, write whatever and close immedately every time. Suggested cronjob workaround (not tested): @daily /etc/init.d/uptimed restart -- System Information: Debian Release: 4.0 APT prefers stable APT policy: (950, 'stable'), (200, 'proposed-updates'), (200, 'stable'), (50, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-686 Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_CH.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages uptimed depends on: ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.11etch1 Debian configuration management sy ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-13etch5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libuptimed01:0.3.10-3Library for uptimed uptimed recommends no packages. -- debconf information: uptimed/mail/do_mail: Never uptimed/mail/address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] uptimed/mail/milestones_info: uptimed/maxrecords: 50 uptimed/interval: 60 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#474500: uptimed: /var/spool/uptimed/records deleted after power fail
tags 474500 moreinfo unreproducible thanks On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Peter Walser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Package: uptimed Version: 1:0.3.10-3 Severity: normal After more than 200 days running, the server power was shut off. No big problem. After booting /var/spool/uptimed/records was gone (or overwritten) and only the current boot is now visible. Is the file opened at start and closed on normal shutdown (whith start-stop-daemon)? No. The records file is only open when necessary. The daemon doesn't write directly to that file either. It writes to a temporary file and then moves it in place of the old records file. I don't see how that could lead to file corruption unless you've been unlucky enough to kill power exactly at the moment of the update... Which leads me to think that the default update interval of 60s is probably overkill and prone to that kind of situation... I suggest to open the file, write whatever and close immedately every time. Which is exactly what is done, afaik. Suggested cronjob workaround (not tested): @daily /etc/init.d/uptimed restart How's that suppose to help? Out of curiosity, what filesystem are you using on your system? In particular what file system is used on /var/spool/uptimed ? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#474500: uptimed: /var/spool/uptimed/records deleted after power fail
Hallo Thibaut Thanx for the fast answer. Is the file opened at start and closed on normal shutdown (whith start-stop-daemon)? No. The records file is only open when necessary. The daemon doesn't write directly to that file either. It writes to a temporary file and then moves it in place of the old records file. I don't see how that think that the default update interval of 60s is probably overkill and prone to that kind of situation... Temporary write and move, then this must be the problem (what else?). I suggest to open the file, write whatever and close immedately every time. Which is exactly what is done, afaik. Suggested cronjob workaround (not tested): @daily /etc/init.d/uptimed restart How's that suppose to help? All files are closed and opended again (but that isn't the way the program works, you say). I tried to kill -9 the job several times, but the error was not reproducable (random 1 returns 0..9 randomly): # while true; do sleep $((55 + $(random 1) )); kill -9 $(ps aux | grep -v grep | grep uptim | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f2); sleep 3; /etc/init.d/uptimed start; cat /var/spool/uptimed/records; done Out of curiosity, what filesystem are you using on your system? In particular what file system is used on /var/spool/uptimed ? From /etc/fstab: /dev/hda8 /varxfs defaults0 2 From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFS: Journaling is an approach to guaranteeing file system consistency even in presence of power failures or system crashes. XFS provides journaling for file system metadata, where file system updates are first written to a serial journal before the actual disk blocks are updated. Where recently modified data has not been flushed to disk before a system crash, XFS ensures that any unwritten data blocks are zeroed on reboot, XFS's journaling procedures are similar to the writeback level of ext3. The part unwritten data blocks are zeroed could be the problem. What do you think? I will set the update interval to 600s and pray ;-) cu Peter
