Install Bug Related to XFS/VM Pressure

[Tower]

First off I am a longtime linux user and have used XFS since it was deemed rather stable.

I believe I have found a install bug that relates to XFS. I am running a Dual PIII 750mhz, SuperMicro Board with 2gb of RAM. The boot is an IDE CR-ROM (Gentoo Stage1), the install drive is an Quantum 10k 18gb drive on an Adaptec controller.

Durring install and in the compile stage the box will 'lock', I can switch between consoles but as soon as anything has to make a disk access that console freezes. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work, etc.

I have eliminated all the hardware (except the motherboard) and eliminated the compile as much as possible but using various different compile options.

I came to the conclusion that it is XFS on the basis that it resembles a bug that has been posted on the XFS mailing list when the file system is under pressure with the 2.4.18 kernel. And is a bug I can sucessfully reproduce on Redhat 7.2 with XFS's install and Samba.

The fix seems to be Linux 2.4.19-pre8 with Andrea's patches. (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.19pre8aa2.bz2)

I am in the process of completing the install ext3 which doesn't seem to trigger the above bug.

Hope this helps anyone else who might be seeing this problem and I hope the Gentoo team can look into adding Andrea's patches to their stock kernel.

Steven

[darkphader]

There is definitely some problem with XFS. I couldn't get through an 'emerge system' when using XFS as the system would hang/lock. After reading your post I changed over to ReiserFS and no more hangs.

[Tower]

After I made my initial post decided to see if removing the j2 from the standard make options would help and it did not. I did however sucessfully complete a Gentoo install with ext3 as the file system.

I had a real hard time ext3 in lue of XFS which is by far the most stable and fastest JFS and has done well by me for almost 2 years.

Granted this does seem to be more of a 2.4.18 issue but it definately is XFS specific and probably won't exist in the 2.4.19 release with XFS.

Steven