[ale] ext3-fs error (RH 3.4.6-2)

Rich Faulkner rfaulkner at 34thprs.org
Wed Nov 30 15:41:57 EST 2011


"Stop storing junk"...sounds like your wife really got to you especially
considering the recent GGG?!  : O  (Did I say that?!)

[...sorry...i couldn't resist...]

All excellent points and words to live by Jim!


On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 15:16 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:

> my heart skips many beats recalling the number of systems that have
> failed during a simple physical
>  relocation. Even let them cool down for several hours before moving
> them 30 feet on a cart with soft tires and padding and drives gently
> removed and shock and static protected separately. failed reoots,
> mobo's die, hard drives fail to ever spin back up, power supplies drop
> a rail, ram never works again, etc.
> 
> I've tried for years to get "the people who make decisions" to do the
> simple following process:
> 
> when time for an upgrade to a server OS (major version change like
> RHEL4->RHEL5)
> 1. Buy new server and do fresh new OS install
> 2. migrate old data to new system and begin testing.
> 3. Once testing is complete and new system taking the load, wipe the
> old drives and sell the old system.
> 4. stop storing junk
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Rich Faulkner <rfaulkner at 34thprs.org>
> wrote:
> 
>         Disk controller in this case is an Adaptec 3805 running RAID
>         5EE.
>         
>         My thoughts were same lines:  old OS, time for upgrade and
>         possible h/w failure impending or in progress...
>         
>         Thanks for the input all!   RinL
>         
>         
>         
>         
>         On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 13:44 -0500, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>         > 
>         > On 11/30/2011 01:25 PM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>         > > A couple of things:
>         > > 
>         > > 1)  You're not using RH 3.4.6-2 - the message tell you your kernel
>         > > was copiled by that version of gcc.   To see the version of RH you're
>         > > running do "cat /etc/issue" and/or "cat /etc/redhat-release".
>         > 
>         > Indeed.  2.6.9 was used for RHEL4 from the looks of it, so it's likely
>         > that he's using that (which is ending support soon anyway).
>         > 
>         > > 2)  The way RedHat does things is it releases a base package from
>         > > upstream then appends it own versioning to that so 2.6.9-42.ELsmp is
>         > > NOT the same as 2.6.9 on any other system as it may have backported
>         > > bug and security fixes in it.   (That being said kernel is handled
>         > > differently than many other packages so you can actually get kernel
>         > > updates from the RedHat yum repositories that might be newer than
>         > > 2.6.9x.
>         > 
>         > This is generally true regardless of the distribution; most
>         > distributions patch the kernel in some way.  One reason that I prefer
>         > using upstream, vanilla kernels is that it's easier to get support for
>         > them than for distro-kernels (at least, IME, YMMV).
>         > 
>         > > You should NOT attempt to download and compile a newer
>         > > kernel manually as it would no longer be RHEL supported at that
>         > > point.
>         > 
>         > Only while the locally-compiled kernel is actually running.  If you have
>         > a problem with the kernel, the first thing to do is to determine if it
>         > is present in the vanilla kernel; if so, file the bug there and file a
>         > bug with the distribution to reference the upstream bug.  Otherwise, if
>         > you cannot reproduce, you have viable information that you can give to
>         > the distributor to say "this problem exists in your kernel version x.y.z
>         > pl eleventyone-foo but not upstream release x.y.z" and that is at least
>         > something to go on.
>         > 
>         > > If you're using RHEL and paying a subscription fee you can call them
>         > > for support.  If you're NOT paying for a subscription fee and using
>         > > them for support you might want to consider moving to CentOS which is
>         > > a binary compile of RHEL sources.  It doesn't require subscription
>         > > fees but also doesn't have a support number.   (Of course you
>         > > wouldn't want to worry about this until you've solved your base
>         > > issue.)
>         > 
>         > This would be the one case where it's likely easier to get support for
>         > the distro kernel, though I'd still be inclined to troubleshoot as far
>         > as I can before I start asking for support from the distributor, in the
>         > interest of reducing the amount of back-and-forth communication I have
>         > to do.  What can I say... I'm lazy!
>         > 
>         > > My thought is as Mike said that it is likely an issue with the disk
>         > > controller or disks themselves.
>         > 
>         > Possibly, though even so, the kernel shouldn't be attempting to deref a
>         > NULL pointer unless the kernel image itself is somehow corrupted or
>         > modified.  The thing is that in that case, it'd be very likely that the
>         > kernel wouldn't work at all (and in what I'd call a safe/secure system,
>         > it shouldn't because it should be somehow meaningfully signed, but
>         > that's neither here nor there).
>         > 
>         > If the kernel's not corrupt and there is indeed a problem with the disk
>         > controller or the disk itself, it shouldn't be able to cause the kernel
>         > to crash by deref'ing a NULL pointer; the kernel should be able to catch
>         > such an issue and freeze the FS to save it from any further problems.  A
>         > panic would be warranted, IMHO, but with hopefully a more meaningful
>         > message.
>         > 
>         > 	--- Mike
>         > 
>         > _______________________________________________
>         > Ale mailing list
>         > 
>         > Ale at ale.org http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale See
>         > JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>         > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo 
>         
>         
>         
>         
>         
>         _______________________________________________
>         Ale mailing list
>         Ale at ale.org
>         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>         See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>         
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III
> 
> As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
> consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as
> they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the
> outcome.
> - 2011 Noam Chomsky
> 
> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20111130/a9a4e66f/attachment.html 


More information about the Ale mailing list