Bugzilla – Bug 134471
Problem with mke2fs during install
Last modified: 2006-01-29 13:56:54 UTC
Following partition table exists: Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB - 36GB Disk label type: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 17kB 200MB 200MB fat32 2 200MB 36GB 36GB ext3 Reusing these partitions but instructing Yast to reformat them results in mke2fs appearing to hang for 5 minutes. ps shows the following: F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD 0 D 0 2972 2101 1 78 0 - 346 get_re tty1 00:00:02 mke2fs Totally reproducable when run directly from vcons (HP zx6000 2x36GB U320 disk). It gets as far as "Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:" and then goes on vacation for 5 minutes (no disk activity). See attached y2log for more details. It eventually recovers and proceeeds.
Created attachment 57758 [details] Y2log of mk2efs
Since it also hangs when run on the vcon this really looks like a problem within mke2fs.
Tony please try mke2fs calls in the running system. You can use the -n switch that does dry runs...
-n from the INSTALLER vcons works just fine. I don't have a spare disk to try actually running it from the booted SL10.1 Suggest you try it from the installation DVD. The default install is reiser3, so it's possible this just hasn't been tried before, or maybe it's specific to my hardware. Tue Nov 22 10:35:53 PST 2005 0 S root 2707 712 1 80 0 - 218 wait 10:32 tty2 00:00:02 strace -tt mke2fs /dev/sdb2 0 D root 2708 2707 1 78 0 - 456 get_re 10:32 tty2 00:00:03 mke2fs /dev/sdb2 0 S root 2745 2742 0 79 0 - 321 pipe_w 10:35 tty6 00:00:00 grep mke2fs WIDE_WCHAN_COLUMN PID get_request_wait 2708 Attaching strace of what it's doing. For comparison, on Debian, 'mke2fs /dev/sdb2" (same target disk) takes 12.18 seconds elapsed time to complete.
Created attachment 58130 [details] strace of mke2fs (run from vcons/2) Actually not that useful, just shows a 4 minute "black hole".
is there anything else in the logs? Maybe harddisk errors in the kernel buffer? (dmesg)
The machine got wiped. Sorry for the delay. I was waiting for an alpha4 iso to retest but it appears there won't be one for ia64. The problem does not occur when installing SLES10p3. This is mke2fs 1.38. I imagine both SL10.1 and SLES are using the same stable package? Anyways, clearly the disk isn't at fault. Could be an issue with the installation kernel. I didn't pay attention to what the versioning was for this. Let me know how you want to proceed.
This doesn't happen any longer in SLES10p4. Recommend close.
ok