Subject: Re: [vserver] vserver and iscsi kernel panic
From: "John A. Sullivan III" <jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:30:28 -0500

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? 
> 
> once again my crystal ball failed me as it couldn't
> create a crispy clear image of your kernel panic :)
<snip>
OK - now I'm more panicked than the kernel! (and ready to reveal even
more ignorance) This is apparently a known bug in open-iscsi:

"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."

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? 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.  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.
Thanks - John
-- 
John A. Sullivan III
Open Source Development Corporation
+1 207-985-7880
jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com

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