Re: What does "xlog_state_do_callback: looping " mean?

[David Sparks <daves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[...]
> Nothing is wrong with your filesystem.

Thanks for the explanation.

> I'm curious what your system config is: CPU speed, how many CPUs, what
> type of disk and controler are under your XFS filesystems.  It could
> be time to revisit my defintion of "looping excessively" in this
> context.

It is a single P3 running bind 9 and sendmail under medium-heavy load. 
I've tried to cut-n-paste the relevant diagnostic outputs below.

I've just noticed a problem that the machine has a VIA chipset but the 
kernel only had Intel/generic support so it wasn't running in a DMA 
mode.  The buffered read rate from hdparm -t was only 4 MB/s.

When using the generic IDE driver that log line would be written every 
few minutes.  I haven't seen it since switching to using the VIA driver. 
 I guess the problem is the classic operator error.  :'/

Thanks for the help!

ds




<from dmesg>
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:04.1
VP_IDE: chipset revision 16
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686a (rev 22) IDE UDMA66 controller on pci0000:00:04.1
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xb800-0xb807, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xb808-0xb80f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS30.0, ATA DISK drive
Using anticipatory io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hdc: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-116 0107, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 60233564 sectors (30839 MB) w/1902KiB Cache, CHS=59755/16/63, UDMA(66)
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 p4
hdc: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, UDMA(33)

<from lspci -v>
 0000:00:04.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10) 
(prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
        Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 32
        I/O ports at b800 [size=16]
        Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2


mx3 root # cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping        : 6
cpu MHz         : 870.633
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca 
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips        : 1716.22

mx3 root # cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       387520 kB
MemFree:         71572 kB
Buffers:         43728 kB
Cached:         116852 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         171312 kB
Inactive:        32692 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       387520 kB
LowFree:         71572 kB
SwapTotal:      506036 kB
SwapFree:       506036 kB
Dirty:            4308 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:          50484 kB
Slab:           109908 kB
Committed_AS:    85384 kB
PageTables:        412 kB
VmallocTotal:   638968 kB
VmallocUsed:       292 kB
VmallocChunk:   638676 kB

<using the VIA IDE driver>
mx3 root # hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   612 MB in  2.00 seconds = 305.89 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   92 MB in  3.01 seconds =  30.60 MB/sec