could not read transaction log directory ...?

Michael Brusser <michael@synchronicity.com> writes:

2003-05-07 15:04:10 PANIC: could not read transaction log directory -
(<my_dir_path>/pg_xlog): Unknown error 523

Bizarre. Can you dig around in your kernel sources and see what errno
523 might mean?

regards, tom lane

From errno.h :
... ...
/* Defined for the NFSv3 protocol */
#define EBADHANDLE 521 /* Illegal NFS file handle */
#define ENOTSYNC 522 /* Update synchronization mismatch */
#define EBADCOOKIE 523 /* Cookie is stale */
... ...

"Cookie is stale" - ..?
Should I consider some problems with the file server?
The strange thing is that process always crashes some 30 minutes
after start. Another point is that it works fine on another machine -
Red Hat 7.2 with 2.4.9 kernel.

I'm not sure what to make out of this.
Thanks,
Mike.

Michael Brusser <michael@synchronicity.com> writes:

"Cookie is stale" - ..?
Should I consider some problems with the file server?

Running a database over an NFS mount is widely considered foolish.
It exposes you to all sorts of failure modes that don't exist with
a local filesystem.

The strange thing is that process always crashes some 30 minutes
after start.

Well, that would fit fine with the notion that there's some kind of
30-minute timeout on open files in your NFS stack.

Another point is that it works fine on another machine -
Red Hat 7.2 with 2.4.9 kernel.
I'm not sure what to make out of this.

I'd call it a kernel bug or NFS server bug.

regards, tom lane

From errno.h :

... ...
/* Defined for the NFSv3 protocol */
#define EBADHANDLE 521 /* Illegal NFS file handle */
#define ENOTSYNC 522 /* Update synchronization mismatch */
#define EBADCOOKIE 523 /* Cookie is stale */
... ...

"Cookie is stale" - ..?
Should I consider some problems with the file server?
The strange thing is that process always crashes some 30 minutes
after start. Another point is that it works fine on another machine -
Red Hat 7.2 with 2.4.9 kernel.

I'm not sure what to make out of this.

Actually, that is somewhat suggestive...

chvatal:/usr/src/linux/fs/nfs# grep EBADCOOKIE *.c
dir.c: if (res == -EBADCOOKIE) {
nfs2xdr.c: return ERR_PTR(-EBADCOOKIE);
nfs2xdr.c: { NFSERR_BAD_COOKIE,
EBADCOOKIE },
nfs3xdr.c: return ERR_PTR(-EBADCOOKIE);
chvatal:/usr/src/linux/fs/nfs# grep EBADCOOKIE *.c

Does this mean that you are storing your filesystems on NFS?

That could well be the root of the problem; NFS has been somewhat in
flux, and is usually not a highly recommended way of storing PG data.

I hear D'Arcy Cain uses NFS fairly successfully for the purpose, but I
believe he's using NetApp boxes, which are _quite_ different from the
norm, and likely aren't what you are using.

My first suggestion would be Stop Using NFS (unless you are really quite
certain of what you're doing).
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
http://cbbrowne.com/info/x.html
Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big*
RAMdisk!

Does this mean that you are storing your filesystems on NFS?

That could well be the root of the problem; NFS has been somewhat in
flux, and is usually not a highly recommended way of storing PG data.

I hear D'Arcy Cain uses NFS fairly successfully for the purpose, but I
believe he's using NetApp boxes, which are _quite_ different from the
norm, and likely aren't what you are using.

My first suggestion would be Stop Using NFS (unless you are really quite
certain of what you're doing).

Or switch to FreeBSD - ever since the 'fsx' NFS automatic testing tool came
out from Apple, FreeBSD has had an excellent NFS implementation.

Chris

I don't have much choice here - these are development and
test machines, few different platforms but all on NFS.
Testing is very intensive and Postgres takes up a lot of beating.
I think this is the first time we ran into this kind of problem.

I just want to thank everyone for help.
Mike.

Do you have any options for NFS set in your fstab for this share? We had
to make a few changes to get NFS to work reliably (we still don't use it
for database, just raw text files and such.) My options are:

timeo=10,retry=1,bg,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192

If anyone has any suggestions to make to mine feel free, those are the
settings I got from one of the networking guys, they may well be
non-optimal. But NFS doesn't just disappear for seconds at a time anymore
like it used to during snapshots.

On Thu, 8 May 2003, Michael
Brusser wrote: