Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-23 Thread Matt Zimmerman
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 04:25:43AM -, QuentinHartman wrote:
> @Colin King:
> 
> On my machine I have hpet, acpi_pm, jiffies, and tsc as available clock
> sources. hpet seems to be the default. Here are my results using the
> daily from the 21st (I think...)
> 
> hpet: stalls
> acpi_pm: stalls (perhaps worse than hpet)
> jiffies: Works! If this does not eliminate the stalls, it at least makes them 
> so short they are easily confused with normal processing
> tsc: stalls really badly, worse than hpet or acpi_pm
> 
> I'm going to test jiffies a couple more times, but the one run though
> worked great! Remember that this is on real hardware, not KVM!

The problem originally described in this bug report has been isolated, and
found to be specific to KVM, thus yours is not the same bug.

Please move discussion of your problem back to the bug report you filed
(#217849) to avoid confusion.

-- 
 - mdz

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-22 Thread QuentinHartman
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 4:26 AM, Colin King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> It maybe worth booting with clocksource set to one of the alternative
> clocksources available on your machine. One can see which clocksources
> are available using:
>
> cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/available_clocksource
>
> and then boot with clocksource=xxx  (where xxx is one of the
> clocksoures).
>
> I cannot test this as I don't have the ability to run kvm on my hardware
> setup here. Can somebody try this and checks if it helps or not.
>

I'll try using different clock sources tonight.

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-Quentin Hartman-


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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-22 Thread Matt Zimmerman
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 09:19:23PM -, Colin Watson wrote:
> Derek: There's no screensaver in d-i. Screen blanking is a distant
> possibility, though. The default screen blanking interval set by the
> kernel is 10 minutes, and d-i doesn't change this; if the failure
> happens after 10 minutes (or nearby, to allow for possible clock skew
> inside kvm) then that would provide some circumstantial support for
> this.

If that were the case, I'd expect the progress bar to jump if it was paused
for a few minutes, though no one has mentioned that.

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-21 Thread QuentinHartman
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Soren Hansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If further testing reveals that disabling the tsc actually helps, I've
> prepared a kernel patch that will fix it for us:
>
> http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=soren/ubuntu-
> hardy.git;a=commit;h=c472835957c7bce42c56aa2c57caa2e80a5bdb1a
>
> Mind you, the code is completely untested (it's getting rather late
> here), but it looks plausible.
>

Well I tested this on my machine here and I still see the problem, though
with notsc it seems less frequent. I'm concerned that may be wishful
thinking on my part.  I have noticed a new behavior where the install
red-screen fails during the "selecting and installing packages" bit towards
the end of the install. I get a stall like before, but this time when I hit
a key to continue, rather than carrying it, it drops me out to the red
screen. Even if I go go back a few steps in the install process, it keeps
giving me a red screen "A installation step has failed" or the like. I need
to do some more testing and see if I can get it to reliably correlate to
something I'm changing, but as you pointed out, it's getting late here
too...

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-21 Thread QuentinHartman
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:13 AM, davmor2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> There is no fault on the test I just ran using the image 20080421 on
> hardware.  If possible could the original report please test and see if
> he still has the issue with the new cd?
>

I am downloading the that ISO now, I will run it on my problem machine and
report back tonight.

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-21 Thread Matt Zimmerman
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:21:46AM -, Colin King wrote:
> A couple of points worth mulling over to corner this one..
> 
> 1. Is the "hanging" a function of memory size - for example, the buffer
> cache filling up after a certain amount of time and then pdflush kicking
> in very aggressively doing dirty data writing backs as fast as it can.
> In which case, one may see the system resume again after a (long) period
> of time once pdflush is complete.  It may be worth tweaking with the
> /proc/sys/vm/dirty* options to see if this trips the problem more
> frequently. Also, it may be worth seeing if doing the install with small
> memory kvm virtual machines shows this problem earlier than large memory
> virtual machines just to see if it is a buffer cache write back cpu
> starvation issue.
> 
> 2. From my understanding dd is being used to zero the encrypted disk.
> Does changing the dd block size to a very large size trip this bug
> earlier as one gets more throughput than the normal (small) block size
> default?

It's a custom program, actually, blockdev-wipe (in the partman-crypto
package).

> 3. Is the hanging resumed by an external interrupt (keyboard, mouse)
> because of the scheduler boosts interactive sessions temporarily and
> hence interfering (in a positive way) to the balancing of the encryption
> kernel space thread, dd and pdflush?

Note also that there are reports of similar behaviour in other parts of the
installer, which aren't necessarily as I/O intensive.

-- 
 - mdz

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-18 Thread Matt Zimmerman
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 06:24:50PM -, Rick Clark wrote:
> I think we can consider kvm a hardware type for these purposes.

Only if the bug is in the guest kernel.  This could be an issue with KVM
itself, or with the host side.

-- 
 - mdz

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-18 Thread QuentinHartman
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 10:28 AM, Dustin Kirkland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>
> So thinking much earlier in the installer, anything come to mind?
> Particularly something that might have been added since Gutsy as we now
> believe this is a regression?
>
>
The only thing I can think of that should be relying on entropy would be the
lvm-crypt and disk-wiping stuff that goes along with it, and this problem
gets triggered even when those aren't in use.

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-Quentin Hartman-

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Re: [Bug 217815] Re: Installation stalls randomly until a key is pressed

2008-04-18 Thread Matt Zimmerman
Current thinking is that there are probably two separate issues here:

 1. A problem specific to the KVM virtual environment
 2. A problem specific to a particular hardware type.

As such, I've un-duped bug 217849.

-- 
 - mdz

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