warning: don't use mm-sources on non-testing systems

iBormuth · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 59

I know several people using the mm-sources kernel tree on daily use systems (I also used to).
Just to point it out again: The mm-patchset replaced the odd numbered experimental tree (2.7) and thus cannot be expected to be reliable.
The current tree (mm-sources-2.6.9_rc1-r1) has a bug which can lead to massive data loss via truncated files.
I used it on a rock solid box with ext3 filesystem. After a while the system was nealy unusable. Booting an older kernel fixed the issue.
Other similar cases have been reported in the forum.

codergeek42 · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 7:46 pm Post subject:

Hm...I just finished compiling and rebooting into 2.6.9-rc1-mm1.Are you sure it wasn't a hardware bug or ACPI or something like that?
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zerojay · Veteran Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1033

speeding · n00b Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 14 Location: Europe

arrrrgh!!!

Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!

I just spent the better part of the day tring to figure out why 'tar' was producing truncated files

....

Never thought it could be the kernel.

Thank you again for mentioning it.

zerojay · Veteran Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1033

Sure was a confusing little bastard. I was sitting here wondering what I should do about it all.

codergeek42 · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:45 pm Post subject:

Ok. The bug bit me too...I went to re-compile my kernel (forgot to add support for my NIC) and it said it could not recognize some of the source files because they were truncated...oops.

/me is back in his safe little 2.6.8-rc2-love3 kernel, compiling the vanilla 2.6.9-rc1 kernel
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markfl · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 9:29 pm Post subject:

Will:
http://www.mafteah.co.il/mafteah-sources/2.6.9-rc1/2.6.9-rc1-Mafteah2/broken-out/2.6.9-rc1-mm1-fix.patch

Fix the filesystem corruption?
I think there's going to be a new mm soon anyway.
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bulletman · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 126

Thanks for pointing this out -- I couldn't find out what was going on.

Are the earlier versions of mm-sources the only safe kernels with reiser4 so far?

Stephen

Master One · l33t Joined: 25 Aug 2003 Posts: 754 Location: Austria

I started with mm-sources for my daily used workstation, because they were they first having the fixes for my nforce2 board, and also I tried a lot of other sources, I always returned to mm-sources.

I don't think it's worth a general warning, only because something breaks from time to time, especially as there are always fixes comming up fast.

I really like these sources, and as I doubt I'll find something better, I simply stick with it

BTW Mafteah's patch fixed it.
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iBormuth · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 59

Rainmaker · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 3:37 pm Post subject:

other question: do the nvidia drivers compile cleanly to this new mm kernel?
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iBormuth · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 59

Talking about the 2.6 development model:

Poll: http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3516
Story: http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3522

Master One · l33t Joined: 25 Aug 2003 Posts: 754 Location: Austria

Ok, I have to admit, my statement was a little to early, as just after writing my posting, my box froze and I had to perform a hardreset. There are definitely some bugs in mm-sources-2.6.9_rc1-r1, I wasn't aware of.

So for the moment I made a backstep to development-sources-2.6.9-rc1, which work just fine.

For the future, I'll keep both (mm-sources & development-sources) on my workstation, so that I can revert to something stable if necessary.
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codergeek42 · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 5:19 pm Post subject:

plate · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 9:09 pm Post subject:

This thread has prevented major data corruption on my desktop, thanks a lot! I've had "truncated file" errors during a Perl upgrade just now, wondering what on earth was going on, especially since the same upgrade to Perl 5.8.5 compiled flawlessly on another desktop standing right next to it - the only difference being a 2.4.27 kernel on that one... Phew.

I've just rebooted to the 2.6.8.1-mm4 kernel I was running before 2.6.9-rc1-mm1, and it looks like it's cured the hickup.

Maybe the corruption had to do with my earlier assaults on this particular machine: This afternoon I copied 700 MB worth of email (in > 50.000 individual files) from an NFS share to a local directory, and ran a bash script over the whole shebang to convert it from MH to maildir format... :roll:

Regor · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:49 am Post subject:

Hmm, shame. It's the smoothest kernel for desktop use I've tried in a while.

I haven't had any problems, but I don't want to risk it. Guess it's back to 2.6.8-rc2-love3.
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Rainmaker · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 1:48 pm Post subject:

mm2 is out. Should be fixed now
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iBormuth · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 59

'
Just to close the thread, here is the official comment:

codergeek42 · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 3:30 pm Post subject:

Coolness. I'll try it out when I get home later.

Is renaming the -mm1 ebuild sufficient or is there another ebuild somewhere that I should use?
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~~ Peter: Programmer, Mathematician, STEM & Free Software Advocate, Enlightened Agent, Transhumanist, Fedora contributor
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tormen · n00b Joined: 01 Sep 2004 Posts: 3

Thnx a lot for this incredible important information!!!

Without it I could have destroyed all my system with the time...

But YOU are my HERO

routerguy · Guru Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 462

I am having a few problems with mm2.

cdparanoia can't access the CD-ROM drive like my other kernels can
the nvidia kernel module refuses to load even though I have my /usr/src/linux symlink correctly set up and have done emerge nvidia-kernel and opengl-update nvidia many times. What else would the problem be?

Tronil · n00b Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Denmark

DJ_Rubbie · n00b Joined: 03 Jan 2004 Posts: 38 Location: /dev/null

Not sure if this completely relates, but using this particular mm kernel caused this error message to show up during reiserfsck (on ReiserFS v3).

Bread: End of file. Cannot read the block (8705213).

Then it complained that it can't fix it up, and asked for the root password for system maintanence...

Boot into gentoo-sources 2.6.7 had no problems, nor did love-sources 2.6.8.1. Not sure if this is related, but it sounds like it saw end of file prematurely, as if it was truncated. Good thing it didn't mount, who knows what it would have done to my /usr partition...
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