Re: hunt for 2.6.37 dm-crypt+ext4 corruption? (was: Re: dm-cryptbarrier support is effective)

[Matt]

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Mike Snitzer <snitzer@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 04 2010 at  2:18pm -0500,
> Matt <jackdachef@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Mike Snitzer <snitzer@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Matt and Jon,
>> >
>> > If you'd be up to it: could you try testing your dm-crypt+ext4
>> > corruption reproducers against the following two 2.6.37-rc commits:
>> >
>> > 1) 1de3e3df917459422cb2aecac440febc8879d410
>> > then
>> > 2) bd2d0210cf22f2bd0cef72eb97cf94fc7d31d8cc
>> >
>> > Then, depending on results of no corruption for those commits, bonus
>> > points for testing the same commits but with Andi and Milan's latest
>> > dm-crypt cpu scalability patch applied too:
>> > https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/365542/
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> > Mike
>> >
>>
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> it seems like there isn't even much testing to do:
>>
>> I tested all 3 commits / checkouts by re-compiling gcc which was/is
>> the 2nd easy way to trigger this "corruption", compiling google's
>> chromium (v9) and looking at the output/existance of gcc, g++ and
>> eselect opengl list
>
> Can you be a bit more precise about what you're doing to reproduce?
> What sequence?  What (if any) builds are going in parallel?  Etc.
>
>> so far everything went fine
>>
>> After that I used the new patch (v6 or pre-v6), before that I had to
>>
>> replace WQ_MEM_RECLAIM with WQ_RESCUER
>>
>> and, re-compiled the kernels
>>
>> shortly after I had booted up the system with the first kernel
>> (http://git.eu.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=5a87b7a5da250c9be6d757758425dfeaf8ed3179)
>> the output of 'eselect opengl list' did show no opengl backend
>> selected
>>
>> so it seems to manifest itself even earlier (ext4: call
>> mpage_da_submit_io() from mpage_da_map_blocks()) even if only subtly
>> and over time -
>> I'm still currently running that kernel and posting from it & having tests run
>
> OK.
>
>> I'm not sure if it's even a problem with ext4 - I haven't had the time
>> to test with XFS yet - maybe it's also happening with that so it more
>> likely would be dm-core, like Milan suspected
>> (http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=129123636223477&w=2) :(
>
> It'd be interesting to try to reproduce with that same kernel but using
> XFS.  I'll check with Milan on what he thinks would be the best next
> steps.  Ideally we'll be able to reproduce your results to aid in
> pinpointing the issue.  I think Milan will be trying to do so shortly
> (if he hasn't started already -- using gentoo emerge, etc).
>
>> even though most of the time it's compiling I don't need to do much -
>> I need the box for work so if my time allows next tests would be next
>> weekend and I'm back to my other partition
>>
>> I really do hope that this bugger can be nailed down ASAP - I like the
>> improvements made in 2.6.37 but without the dm-crypt multi-cpu patch
>> it's only half the "fun" ;)
>
> Sure, we'll need to get to the bottom of this before we can have
> confidence sending the dm-crypt cpu scalability patch upstream.
>
> Thanks for your testing,
> Mike
>

OK, before bed time I found some kind of corruption:

running kernel is from commit: bd2d0210cf22f2bd0cef72eb97cf94fc7d31d8cc

the messages might be overseen - so they're difficult to notice:

steps:
1) bootup
2) (might need to re-install graphics driver due to driver switch, in
this case magic properties [or what's its name] didn't change so the
kernel module still worked)
3) firing up 2 xterms, xload, xclock, gksu -> terminal -> firefox,
nautilus --no-desktop, gnome-mplayer (playing mp3)
4) emerge -1 sys-devel/gcc (from one of the xterms)

after emerge -1 sys-devel/gcc
finished it displayed:

>>> Auto-cleaning packages...
portage: COUNTER for sys-devel/patch-2.6.1 was corrupted; resetting to
value of 0
portage: COUNTER for sys-devel/patch-2.6.1 was corrupted; resetting to
value of 0

(the COUNTER file normally should have a value, e.g.:
cat /var/db/pkg/sys-devel/gcc-4.5.1-r1/COUNTER
20560)

in this case it's empty:
cat /var/db/pkg/sys-devel/patch-2.6.1/COUNTER

(shows nothing)

reference thread: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-836605-start-0.html

it's solvable by re-install but in case of not-recoverable files (e.g.
personal files) it would be critical
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