Re: failures on machines using jfs

When grilled further on (Wed, 7 Jan 2004 18:06:08 -0500),
Andrew Sullivan <andrew(at)libertyrms(dot)info> confessed:

>
> We have lately had a couple of cases where machines either locked up,
> slowed down to the point of complete unusability, or died completely
> while using jfs. We are _not_ sure that jfs is in fact the culprit.
> In one case, a kernel panic appeared to be referring to the jfs
> kernel module, but I can't be sure as I lost the output immediately
> thereafter. Yesterday, we had a problem of data corruption on a
> failed jfs volume.
>
> None of this is to say that jfs is in fact to blame, nor even that,
> if it is, it does not have something to do with the age of our
> installations, &c. (these are all RH 8). In fact, I suspect hardware
> in both cases. But I thought I'd mention it just in case other
> people are seeing strange behaviour, on the principle of "better
> safe than sorry."
>

Interestingly enough, I'm using JFS on a new scsi disk with Mandrake 9.1 and
was having similar problems. I was generating heavy disk usage through database
and astronomical data reductions. My machine (dual AMD) would suddenly hang.
No new jobs would run, just increase the load, until I reboot the machine.

I solved my problems by creating a 128Mb ram disk (using EXT2) for the temp
data produced my reduction runs.

I believe JFS was to blame, not hardware, but you never know...

Cheers,
Rob

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