Subject: Re: [vserver] vserver and iscsi kernel panic
From: "John A. Sullivan III" <jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:45:20 -0500

On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 01:08 +0100, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:30:28AM -0500, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 11:36 +0100, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 02:56:36AM -0500, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> > > > Hello, all. I am running VServer kernel 2.6.22.19-vs2.3.0.34.1 on
> > > > CentOS 5.2 with iscsi-initiator-utils 2.0.868-0.7.el5 in amd64 with
> > > > two quad core 2378 CPUs. Whenever we try to login to an iSCSI target,
> > > > we receive a kernel panic. Is this a known issue? How does one
> > > > stabilize it? 
> <snip>> "In 2.6.22 and below there is bug where open-iscsi does not handle some 
> > of the packets we got from open solaris correctly. It is not open 
> > solaris's fault and was a driver bug."
> 
> <snip>> Since this is planned to be both a complex and heavily taxed production
> > environment, I've been trying to stay well "within the lines" by using
> > the CentOS dhozac repository RPMs.  However, these are kernel 2.6.22.
> 
> > Anything newer is labeled experimental on the VServer download page.
> > Any recommendations for a very stable experimental kernel to use? 
> 
> 
> 2.6.27.x is said to be long-term maintained by mainline
> and thus we will also provide long-term maintainance to
> the related Linux-VServer patches, so probably that would
> be a good choice ...
> 
> > Are there any problems using a much newer kernel than normally ships
> > with CentOS 5.2? Would there happen to be any RPMs available as I do
> > not want my ignorance of our systems requirements to show up in a
> > misconfigured custom compiled kernel and would like to eventually be
> > able to revert to the repositories.
> 
> no idea, probably Daniel known more in this regard ...
> 
> > Worse comes to worst, I will take the plunge and build a custom kernel
> > as I used to do for our IPSec gateways years ago.
> 
> IMHO building a 'custom' kernel is the only sane way
> to setup a performant and reliable system, at least
> I would always prefer a lean and clean kernel over a
> distribution one-kernel-fits-all monster, but YMMV
<snip>
Thanks, Herbert.  The build went smoothly with the instructions in the
wiki and the panics have gone away.  I'm having a problem with errors
about being able to access rtc no matter how I compile the kernel so I'm
assuming that is a mismatch between kernel and userland tools.  Googling
for hours hasn't been much help so I'll see what happens when CentOS 5.3
ships.  Thanks again - John
-- 
John A. Sullivan III
Open Source Development Corporation
+1 207-985-7880
jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com

http://www.spiritualoutreach.com
Making Christianity intelligible to secular society