Re: [Xen-devel] Fwd: file system filled, xen won't start giving confusing errors

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>   We had a problem while rebooting one of our xen boxes. The case
> showed us that while trying to `xm create ...` the xm command will
> exit with "err 2, no such file or directory". But `stat vm.conf`
> showed that the file was there.
>
>   We realized that the file system was full, and removed some space.
> However, now with free space, xm refused to start domains.
>
>    The solution came by rebooting the box, and starting again the vm's by
> hand.

Well diagnosed!

>    While I reccon our foult on letting the / get filled, I don't
> understand the error message stderr'ored by xm, "no such file or
> directory". Pretty confusing.

Indeed.  I don't suppose you took a copy of the xend.log / xend-debug.log from 
when the failure happened?

>     xen 3.03, dell 1950 with a big ram support and raid 1.
>
>    Is this a known problem? How can we help getting this sorted?

I don't think it was know before; thank you very much for reporting it.

I imagine Xen was trying to do some kind of IO in the process of starting the 
domain, it was failing due to the filesystem being full, and it was being 
misreported as "file not found".  I guess it's possible the tools were 
*actually* trying (and failing silently) to create a file somewhere, and then 
not being able to find it subsequently.

This should (fingers crossed) be easy to replicate, though.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel