[Unionfs] Problem with UnionFS 2.1.7

[Erez Zadok]

In message <000a01c81990$c23ad640$3ac111ac at FLASH>, "Yuri Kirsanov" writes:

> Good day. I have compiled UnionFS for kernel 2.6.20.21. I have used =
> UnionFS 1.1.5 with kernel 2.6.13.5 before, and everything was fine. But =
> now I have plenty of errors in my logs and some directories just stop =
> responding. Finally, I just can't enter catalog /var/tmp, where file =
> zabbix_agentd.log is situated, and I can't kill zabbix_agentd process =
> because it's unable to close file handle.

Yuri,

Thanks for providing me with your boot images and kernel sources.

The good news: I was able to create a bootable flash drive (brand new USB
2.0 2GB SanDisk drive) with your unmodified images, which I tried on a real
Dell machine (which has 1GB RAM) whose BIOS can boot from USB devices.  I
was also able to create a bootable IDE drive (512MB) with the same image,
which I booted in VMware Workstation 6.0.1 configured with 1GB RAM (however,
your system seems to want to want a plugged flash drive even in vmware).

The bad news: in both test cases, the system booted fine and I did not get
the errors you reported.  Specifically, I was able to cd to /var/tmp, see
the zabbix_agentd.log and zabbix_agentd.pid files, read them, modify them,
create new files, etc.  I was also able to kill the zabbix_agentd process
w/o any problems.

BTW, yes, I did see some of the unionfs kernel messages (new lower mtime,
etc.), but as I said, they're nothing to worry about.  In the next release
of unionfs I've changed some of those printk's to pr_debug's so as to reduce
console clutter further.

How much memory is in the system you're testing?  Are you getting any other
kernel errors?  Could your flash drive be perhaps corrupt?

I could get you a tarball of my VMware image, which you could try in the
free VMware Player, if you'd like.

Thanks,
Erez.