Bug 80626 - Using swapfile on ext3 causes crash
Summary: Using swapfile on ext3 causes crash
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: kernel
Version: 7.3
Hardware: athlon
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Arjan van de Ven
QA Contact: Brian Brock
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2002-12-28 23:41 UTC by Bart Ogryczak
Modified: 2005-10-31 22:00 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2004-09-30 15:40:20 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Bart Ogryczak 2002-12-28 23:41:14 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021204

Description of problem:
Using swapfile on ext3 under heavy load causes serious problems with system
stability (applications behave like with broken RAM). Sometimes even couses
system crashes (kernel panic or freezing when halting).
Kernel is 2.4.18-19.7.x on RH Linux 7.3.
No problems with same configuration and swap partition.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create swapfile on ext3 partition 
2. mount it with swapon
3. use some application, which will need lots of memory and CPU.
    

Actual Results:  Application unstable, often crashing. Sometimes whole system
going down with kernel panic.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Ben LaHaise 2003-01-02 16:39:50 UTC
Are you booting with data=journal per chance?  How is the swapfile being
created?  Swapfiles must not be sparse files.  Also, providing the kernel
messages for any crashes would be helpful.

Comment 2 Bart Ogryczak 2003-01-02 17:27:09 UTC
I'm booting without any additional flags for ext3. 
The boot command in grub.conf is as follows:
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-19.7.x)
  root (hd0,1)
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-19.7.x ro root=/dev/hda5 hda=autotune hdd=ide-scsi 

Filesystems are:
/dev/hda2 /boot ext3 
/dev/hda5 / ext3 

Swapfile was created on / partition (made /swap/ directory for it, if that's
relevant). By the book - dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=262144

And one more thing. No doubt about it, after getting rid of that swapfile my
system is way more stable.


Comment 3 Bugzilla owner 2004-09-30 15:40:20 UTC
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of
the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem
persists.

The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, 
and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in
the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/



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