[linux-lvm] Creating snapshot on / hangs machine

[Andrew W. Donoho]

On Oct 14, 2004, at 11:31, Kai Leibrandt wrote:
> As soon as I create a snapshot on / however, the machine hangs, 
> although X still works (well, the mouse still moves), it is no longer 
> possible to open a new shell, switch consoles, or even <CTRL>C the 
> lvcreate.
>
> I have tried this with ext2 as well as with xfs, including doing 
> xfs_freeze before taking the snapshot, so I don't think it's a filesys 
> related matter.
>
> Is there anything I am missing here? Is it even supported to do / 
> snapshots?


Kai,

	I reported a similar problem starting with my root partition when I 
added a second drive. After a bit of skullduggery, I believe that LVM 
activities on the root partition particularly stress the memory system. 
Or, at least, when I slowed the memory system down on my x86-64 
machine, I no longer get crashes like you describe above.

	What convinced me that this might be a problem was when I tried 
compiling a kernel to turn on preemptive scheduling and gcc quit about 
halfway through. The build system listed a comment that when gcc quits 
there is probably a memory problem. After I slowed down the memory 
system, I was able to do a continuous "clean and compile" over night 
with a 3.0+ load average. I have not had any other crashes since then.

Andrew

P.S. I just made these changes two days ago. I was just beginning to 
feel comfortable with my newfound stability. I hope this helps you.

____________________________________
Andrew W. Donoho
awd at DDG.com, PGP Key ID: 0x81D0F250
+1 (512) 453-6652 (o), +1 (512) 750-7596 (m)


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