Serious problem?

inaninck@koha.koha.nl
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 10:40:41 +0100


Hi All,

Here a problem (is it a problem?) for the real kernelGuru's amongst you:

Viewing the logfile my backupsoftware created I found:

---Begin included file---

970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/2/exe": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory
970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/2/root": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory
970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/2/cwd": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory
970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/3/exe": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory
970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/3/root": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory
970304 00:12:07|268|0|[E072] "./proc/3/cwd": error reading symbolic link: errno = 2, No such file or directory

---End included message---

And, indeed, the links link to nothing... 'ls -l /proc/2' and 'ls -l /proc/3'
produce:

total 0
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 cmdline
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 4 21:41 cwd
-r-------- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 environ
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 4 21:41 exe
dr-x------ 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 fd
pr--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 maps
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 mem
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 4 21:41 root
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 stat
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 statm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 4 21:41 status

As /proc/2 and 3 refer to PID 2 and 3, in my case 'kflushd' and 'kswapd',
a 'ps -ealf' produces:

F UID PID PPID PRI NI SIZE RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND
40 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 125f4c SW ? 0:00 (kflushd)
40 0 3 1 -12 -12 0 0 11e365 SW< ? 0:00 (kswapd)

'top' shows 'zombie: 0'

'man ps' shows
====
WCHAN: Name of the kernelfunction where the proces is
sleeping...... If /etc/psdatabase does not exist, it is just a hex number
instead.
====

As a matter of fact all my WCHAN's are hex numbers.

'man ps' also shows
====
You will need to update the /etc/psdatabase by running /etc/psupdate to get
meaningfull information from the WCHAN field.
This should be done every time you compile a new kernel.
====
It's correct again, /etc/psdatabase does not exist.

As /proc is an in-memory file-system, I rebooted the system and immediately
checked /proc, no changes occured. There are zero errors during boot.

Questions:

1) Is my system and/or kernel corrupt? (everything seems to work)
2) Are my 'kflushd' and 'kswapd' running? ('ps' SIZE 0 !!)
3) Should indeed /etc/psupdate be run after each new kernel?
4) 'man psupdate' talks about an 'uncompressed kernel image'.
What is it called when one (me for instance) makes a 'zImage'?
5) Why don't I remember having read this in any kernel-DOC?
6) Do I have any (serious?) problem?
7) By the way, what are 'kflushd' and 'kswapd'?

Anyone with an idea?

Vriendelijke groeten/Best regards,

Ivo Naninck \|||||/
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