From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Description of problem: On a Dell Poweredge 2800 system with a DELL PERC4e/DC using a set of megaraid modules, we experienced unpredictable sudden I/O slowdowns on particular logical drives. During the slowdown, which will eventually stop and can be stopped by rebooting the machine, no load is visible on the physical drives. I/O is only slow to a particular locical drive, others work fine. Depending on the load by the clients (in this case the machine is a file server), as expected, the load avg will pile up, but decreases, as the network load eases off. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-smp-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4 How reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot 2. put system under load 3. wait 24 hrs uptime (or peak load? occurred around 11 am every day) I know that is not really how to reproduce the issue, but since this is a production system, we cannot risk more downtime and were forced to downgrade. Actual Results: I/O on one of the logical disks slow. Expected Results: I/O on all locical devices performing equally. Additional info: I noticed that there has been a major change, a module split in 2.6.13 (see http://lists.debian.org/debian-knoppix/2005/10/msg00054.html ), maybe the problem is related to that. After downgrading to kernel-smp-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 the problem disappeared. I also noticed, that the mptspi module was loaded on 2.6.14 and isn't present with 2.6.12, maybe just not loading mptspi will fix the issue, but as stated above, we cannot really try any more.
This is a mass-update to all currently open kernel bugs. A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.15-1.1830_FC4) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO_REPORTER state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. Thank you.
I have a similar problem on a box used for backups. The box has an LSI MegaRAID SATA 300-8X that uses the megaraid module. Its running Bru Server from TolisGroup for doing backups to disk and then to tape. Originally I was going to use RHEL4 but Tolis expressed concern over the 2.6.9 kernel that was included. I opted for FC4 and got a 2.6.11 kernel that seems to work fine. If I use any kernel newer than 2.6.11 up to and including the latest 2.6.15-1.1830 release, the system load skyrockets during a backup to disk operation. Performance under 2.6.11 is better. Another symptom is that if I don't reboot the box periodically the external SCSI LTO3 Certance tape drive disappears. That may be unrelated to the performance bug. I have the ability to perform tests or make changes as this box is not in production yet. Alternatively, I can stick with 2.6.11.
Is this any better with the current errata ?
The fix was to upgrade to FC5 with current errata. It seems to have fixed things.
[This comment added as part of a mass-update to all open FC4 kernel bugs] FC4 has now transitioned to the Fedora legacy project, which will continue to release security related updates for the kernel. As this bug is not security related, it is unlikely to be fixed in an update for FC4, and has been migrated to FC5. Please retest with Fedora Core 5. Thank you.
A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. In the last few updates, some users upgrading from FC4->FC5 have reported that installing a kernel update has left their systems unbootable. If you have been affected by this problem please check you only have one version of device-mapper & lvm2 installed. See bug 207474 for further details. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. If this bug has been fixed, but you are now experiencing a different problem, please file a separate bug for the new problem. Thank you.
(this is a mass-close to kernel bugs in NEEDINFO state) As indicated previously there has been no update on the progress of this bug therefore I am closing it as INSUFFICIENT_DATA. Please re-open if the issue still occurs for you and I will try to assist in its resolution. Thank you for taking the time to report the initial bug. If you believe that this bug was closed in error, please feel free to reopen this bug.