On 12/7/11, Thomas Himmelmann <[email protected]> wrote:

> Unionfs 2.5.10 don't work stable on kernel 3.0 and 3.1 for me.

2.5.10 is rock-solid with a 3.0.7 kernel for me.

There is something that I found out about the Linux kernel, that might
affect the stability of Unionfs...

A little while ago, we found that one of these config option makes
operation unreliable:

CONFIG_SCHED_SMT
SMT scheduler support improves the CPU scheduler's decision making
when dealing with Intel Pentium 4 chips with HyperThreading at a cost
of slightly increased overhead in some places. If unsure say N here.

CONFIG_SCHED_MC
Multi-core scheduler support improves the CPU scheduler's decision
making when dealing with multi-core CPU chips at a cost of slightly
increased overhead in some places. If unsure say N here.

We were getting mysterious errors when using the 'cp' command. When
copying a complete directory hierarchy, some files/directories were
sometimes completely missing from the destination. There were no error
messages. This has nothing to do with Unionfs (these errors were
occurring in ext2/3 partitions outside of any layer filesystem), I am
describing a fundamental flakyness of the kernel, not just the 3.x,
earlier too.

I discovered that turning off CONFIG_SCHED_SMT and CONFIG_SCHED_MC
fixed it. It is probably only one of those that is the culprit though,
probably CONFIG_SCHED_MC, but I never verified that.

So, my kernel has:

CONFIG_SMP=y
# CONFIG_SCHED_SMT is not set
# CONFIG_SCHED_MC is not set

I recommend, configure your kernel the same, then see if you still get
the problems with Unionfs 2.5.10.

Regards,
Barry Kauler
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