Hi there,
My guess is it's either your IDE cables/controller or it's the 1024
block size - from the Software RAID howto:
The ext2fs blocksize severely influences the performance of the
filesystem. You should always use 4KBblock size on any filesystem
larger than a few hundred megabytes, unless you store a very large
number of very small files on it.
I've been using Software RAID 5 on ext3 for some time (even experimented
with it across enbd which was fun) without problems - but have always
followed the advice in the HOWTO to the letter.
HTH,
Matthew
> From: John Matthews <john@matthews-net.org.uk>
> To: ext3-users@redhat.com
> Subject: Software RAID and ext3 problem
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm having a problem with ext3 on my system. I'm running 2.4.13
with the
> appropiate ext3 patch and a software raid array with paritiions as shown
> below:
>
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/md5 939M 237M 654M 27% /
> /dev/md0 91M 22M 65M 25% /boot
> /dev/md6 277M 8.1M 254M 4% /tmp
> /dev/md7 1.8G 1.3G 595M 69% /usr
> /dev/md8 938M 761M 177M 82% /var
> /dev/md9 9.2G 2.6G 6.1G 30% /home
> /dev/md10 11G 2.1G 8.7G 19% /scratch
> /dev/md12 56G 43G 13G 77% /global
>
> The /usr and /var filesystems keep switching to ro mode following the
> detection of errors. This has been happening on a daily basis since
> switching to ext3 (usually the /var switches, /usr has done it once).
>
> I suppose my first question should be: do ext3 and software raid mix?
>
> If the answer to the above should be 'yes' then here are some more
details
> about the error.
>
> The problem usually occurs during the expiration of news articles. The
> expiration is performed by the program texpire whcihc is part of the
> leafnode package. During the expiration, the following error occurs:
>
> Nov 10 07:39:17 nijinsky kernel: EXT3-fs warning (device md(9,8)):
> ext3_unlink: Deleting nonexistent file (70034), 0
>
> This alone doesn't seem to trip the fs into ro mode... leter in the
syslog
> (virtually last entry before the fs goes readonly) we get:
>
> Nov 10 07:42:46 nijinsky kernel: attempt to access beyond end of device
> Nov 10 07:42:46 nijinsky kernel: 09:08: rw=2, want=128661505, limit=976640
> Nov 10 07:42:46 nijinsky kernel: attempt to access beyond end of device
> Nov 10 07:42:46 nijinsky kernel: 09:08: rw=2, want=91811841, limit=976640
>
> Then the fs goes readonly. Usually it seems to be the /var filesystem
> (which takes out quite a few things that get unhappy when they can't
> create log or lockfiles!).
>
> In case it makes a difference, I think the blocksize on the /var
> filesystem is 1024.
>
> Following the errors, it's normally a case of going into single user
mode
> and doing a manual fsck on the disk....
>
> I've switched back to ext2 for my small filesystems but would like to
use
> ext3.
>
> Any help appreciated....
>
> John.
>