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Date:      Wed, 31 Oct 2018 14:42:52 +0100
From:      Stefan Bethke <stb@lassitu.de>
To:        FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   ZFS high write IO in single user mode
Message-ID:  <9D56C3BA-753B-472F-8FD7-AF90E1F14301@lassitu.de>

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I have two hosts that are configured identically (in a kind of manual =
hot-standby configuration), running a set of jails each.  ZFS datasets =
for the jails and bhyve VMs are synced across regularly. When one of the =
machines exhibits a problem, I can shut down the problematic jails or =
the whole machine, and start the jails/VMs on the other host. This has =
been working really well for the past ~10 years.

A couple of years ago, one of the ZFS pools on one of the machines =
developed some logical inconsistencies that were not detected by zpool =
scrub. The only indication that something was amiss was high disk IO, in =
particular, writes, even when no processes were running. I eventually =
resolved that situation by recreating the zpool and restoring the =
datasets from the working machine.

About a year ago, I upgraded the hardware and in the process created =
fresh pools. This has been running well. Since about two days ago, I now =
have the situation again where I have a steady write rate even in single =
user mode, with the root dataset mounted read only, and the second pool =
that contains the jail datasets not mounted at all.

I only have a video console (via IPMI KVM) so I won=E2=80=99t transcribe =
the complete output, but here=E2=80=99s what I think are significant =
observations:
gstat reports ~30 writes/sec on each of the two disks that make up the =
zmirror pool.

mount shows the root dataset to be mounted read-only.

zpool status takes a really long time, and then reports that everything =
is fine for both pools (boot/os and jails).

smartctl doesn=E2=80=99t show any problems for either of the disks.

I=E2=80=99m happy to just wipe the pools and start fresh, but I=E2=80=99d =
like to use this opportunity to hopefully figure out why ZFS appears to =
act weirdly, and hopefully find a permanent fix. This is 11-stable from =
September 13th.


Stefan

--=20
Stefan Bethke <stb@lassitu.de>   Fon +49 151 14070811




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