[postgrey] Re: Bug#334430: [Pkg-db-devel] hangs on corrupted db file

Nick Moffitt nick at zork.net
Tue Nov 15 08:05:24 UTC 2005


begin  David Schweikert  quotation:
> > On Monday 14 November 2005 22.51, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > >     my $setflags = DB_TXN_NOSYNC;
> > > On some file systems, this adversely impacts the consistency after
> > > system crashes.  

I am running on ext3, if that is any help.  I am on a linode (user-mode
Linux -- eventually to migrate to Xen, but not yet), however, so it's on
a /dev/ubda virtual device:

	/dev/ubda on / type ext3 (rw)
	proc on /proc type proc (rw)
	sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
	devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
	tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

> > > It would be interesting to know what happens if the line is
> > > changed to:
> > >
> > >     my $setflags = 0;

> Since it is not so easy to reproduce the problem, the best would be if
> Nick would test that. I will integrate the change if it has shown to
> help. Anyway, performance is not such a big issue.

I have changed line 496 of /usr/sbin/postgrey on my Debian system to
clear all flags as suggested above.  The host that my UML instance runs
on has some known instabilities that may force further emergency reboots
(these mostly appear as crashes from inside our UML pocket universe),
although we may be migrated to another host within a week.  

So we may have an opportunity to see if things work properly from now
on.  

One other possible variable if this is fs-dependent is that I recently
fsck'd my /dev/ubda, which may hide whatever filesystem quirks might
have tickled this problem.

Thanks for all your attention on such a slippery bug report.

-- 
"virii" would be the plural of the mythical masculine          Nick Moffitt
noun "virius". The neuter plural of "virus" would be     nick at teh.entar.net
"vira" (as "opus" & "opera"), and "viri" is the plural
of the masculine "vir" (man). It really is "viruses"!



More information about the Pkg-db-devel mailing list