Subject: Re: [vserver] For a period of 2 months, the server file system has switched three times into the readonly mode
From: Christoph Lukas <christoph.lukas@gmx.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:23:32 +0100

Hi Stephane,

> I've a vserver installed on Debian Lenny.
> 
> For a period of 2 months, the server file system has switched three
> times into the readonly mode.

I have seen something similar on one of our servers. I have found an
EXT3 fs error in syslog 4 weeks ago. As it happened on the weekend I did
not notice it until monday. The 'journal abort' and switch to read only
mode happened just a few hours later.

The filesystem check moved thousands of files to lost+found and I had to
restore the whole data from our backup.

> What do you think ?
> * is it a vserver issue ?
> * is it a hardware issue ?
> * is it a debian issue ?

I personally think this is an issue with the 2.6.26 debian kernel. If it
is a mainline issue or just a debian one I do not know.

On our server it happened a few hours after the monthly md data
integrity check.

[..]

> Do you need other information ?

As you also got this error on an md device, could you check if it just
happened a few hours after the md data integrity check? Then this
problem might be md related.

I have switched to using the kernel we have build for our ubuntu jaunty
systems [1]. It is running without problems for the last 3 weeks.

Cheers,
Christoph

[1]: http://www.linux-vserver.org/Installation_on_Ubuntu