Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 21 Jul 1997 01:14:04 -0700
From:      Dmitry Kohmanyuk =?KOI8-R?B?5M3J1NLJyiDrz8jNwc7Ayw==?= <dk@farm.org>
To:        Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc:        dk+@ua.net, toor@dyson.iquest.net, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, sia@nest.org
Subject:   Re: -current :)
Message-ID:  <19970721011404.23066@dog.farm.org>
In-Reply-To: <199707202356.QAA10117@phaeton.artisoft.com>; from "Terry Lambert" on Sun, Jul 20, 1997 at 04:56:46PM -0700
References:  <199707192216.PAA21949@dog.farm.org> <199707202356.QAA10117@phaeton.artisoft.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Jul 20, 1997 at 04:56:46PM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > > > Probably MMAP related as ACT_STYLE is MMAP in my config.data file.
> > > > 
> > > > John, any idea ?
> > > >
> > > I have checked the code over and over and over again.  I sure wish we
> > > had a repeatable example :-(.
> > 
> > this _exactly_ (zero-filled page in active, then new newsgroups) happened
> > to me on our news server running 2.2.1-RELEASE.  So, it should be old code.
> 
> I have to say that I believe that this is not an NFS specific problem.
> 
> As I said, I have been able to repeat it with an app *not* using mmap()
> at all, and *not* over NFS.  The app was "vi".

I forgot to mention:  my news server is not running over NFS (should be
obvious, yes?  Not really - I know at least 1 article claiming performance
improvement on SunOS using NFS-mounted news spool from NetApp server. Oh well.)

So, we have different problem reports:  
zero-filled page written with mmap() without NFS (append??),
zero-filled pages appended over NFS (mail client, etc.)
yours case (zero-filled pages without NFS or mmap).

Do you have code which reproduces this bug using shell scripts?? (please
post it if so).

It can be several problems.

> I *truly* believe that the page containing a frag is not being marked
> dirty, and therefore is not allocated or written.
> 
> This is in the append case.
> 
> Obviously, if the file size were updated, and the frag was not,
> a zero-fill would occur on read, just like with sparse blocks.
> 
> The operation which should have "dirtied" the block is a write to
> a frag.
> 
> One thing to note is that I am running 8k FS blocks; as a result, my
> frag size is 1024 bytes.  This is double the block size, and it may
> be related to the problem.
> 
> All the problems have occurred when the entire file is a frag, and
> is extended and remains in the same frag... ie: my file was 40 or
> so characters in length and was only grown by 6 characters (I changed
> the configuration file name for slapd).

And then you got 46 zero bytes, right?

> Before Nate jumps in and starts screaming "TerryBSD!  TerryBSD!" at
> the top of his electronic lungs, as he is wont to do, the problem
> repeated on stock kernels.  The problem did *not* repeat on a
> vanilla 2.2 stock kernel, however.

As I have said, my INN mmap() active file on UFS happened under 2.2.1-R.



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19970721011404.23066>