Created attachment 363007 [details] My /var/log/messages when the problem occurs, see wait_for_file() debug messages towards the ending Description of problem: When a new scsi disk is presented to the system, udev (rules.d/40-multipath) calls 'multipath <major>:<minor>', to add a mapping. If multipath maps are flushed (-F) and recreated at the more-or-less same time, this sometimes leads to a very bad situation: Multipathd gets the "add map" uevent on dm-X, while /sys/block/dm-X/dev is simply never created. (thus it's not solved by the recently added wait_for_file() function patch) This leads to losing multipath mappings which should've been created. Manually adding using the multipath command doesn't solve the situation in many cases. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Tested on RHEL5.1 -> 5.3 with native kernel/device-mapper-multipath versions, and with latest device-mapper-mmultipath-0.4.7-30, kernel-2.6.18-164.el5 Steps to Reproduce: 0. (Optional) Add the following line to libmultipath/discovery.c inside wait_for_file()'s while loop: condlog(0, "wait_for_file %d %s", loop, filename); 1. Run the following evil oneliner: while [ "1" ]; multipath -F; multipath; sleep 1; done 2. Add a SCSI device to the system (I use add-single-device to /proc/scsi/scsi) 3. Stop the while loop after udev rule 40 has finished calling multipath command 4. multipath -l Actual results: In cases of failure: - Some multipath mappings would be missing. - If step 0 was taken, the syslog would print repeatly "multipathd: wait_for_file xxx /sys/block/dm-X/dev" lines. until xxx == 0 (/sys/block/dm-X wouldn't exist even after a long wait) Expected results: All multipath maps should be present. Additional info: I would gladly provide more info.
Maybe it's related to #518575
There was definitely a race between multipath and multipathd, that could cause all sorts of problems (bz #506715). It was fixed. However the fix was in device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-30.el5, which you say that you tried. However, with this package applied, you shouldn't have a line in 40-multipath.rules that calls multipath. It was commented out. It is also possible that 518575 has something to do with this, but I can't see what at the moment. When you tried this with device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-30.el5, was the following line commented out in 40-multipathd.rules? # KERNEL!="dm-[0-9]*", ACTION=="add", PROGRAM=="/bin/bash -c '/sbin/lsmod | /bin/grep ^dm_multipath'", RUN+="/sbin/multipath -v0 %M:%m"
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