RE: named failing to restart after updating to RHEL3 U4

[Benjamin Franz <snowhare nihongo org>]

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Mimmus wrote:

> > (if I had installed the disaster that was the 2.4.21-20.EL kernel on our 
> > most
> > critical production Oracle servers I might be looking for a new job)
>
> We had problems with earlier 2.4.21-9 due to an infamous problem with 
> hugetlbs (Metalink  Oracle Doc. 262004.1/Bug 3570979).
> We recently updated our 'biggest' Oracle 9.2.0.5 servers (two HP DL740 with 8 
> CPUs and 32 GB od RAM) to 2.4.21-20.EL (and patched Oracle), solving 
> problems..
> What other risks are we running now?

Crashing the whole system.

2.4.21-20.EL has a critical problem with kswapd that can cause it to chew 
all available I/O cycles and (eventually) crash the box. Once it triggers, 
the only way out is rebooting. I was able to trigger it reliably on our 
servers just by doing our daily system backups.

Reportedly, the U4 kernel fixes this. But I'm not going to install that 
for testing for another week or two. ;)

--
Benjamin Franz

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