[rrd-developers] bus error when disk is full, with mmap & sparse file

[Tobias Oetiker]

Today Francois-Xavier Bourlet wrote:

> When I was speaking about a SIGBUS handler, I was not really thinking
> about something to recover from errors, but simply check if the SIGBUS
> signal have a file descriptor associated with, and so check the free
> space to print an hint to users. Like:
>
> Bus error (your disk seem full, the error could be a result of an
> impossibility to allocate disk space for a file)
>
> I believe that the strongest way seem to writes zeros before mapping
> the file, using plain old write()s, and so simply check write return
> code / errno and make rrd_open return nicely and error.

fine with me too ... lets see the patch ...

cheers
tobi

>
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Tobias Oetiker <tobi at oetiker.ch> wrote:
> > Hi Francois,
> >
> > Yesterday Francois-Xavier Bourlet wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Tobi,
> >>
> >> Yes it happen at create time.
> >>
> >> Checking available free space before the creation process would lead
> >> to some race condition, because between the time you check the free
> >> space and the time you allocate it you can still have some others
> >> process/thread allocating it.
> >
> > yes ...
> >
> >> But it could be used in another way, by setting up an handler for bus
> >> error that check the free space and print a little hint message before
> >> exiting the application? The advantage would be zero overhead (until
> >> you crash... but do you really care at crash time ;) ) and no
> >> modification of the current rrd_open function. What do you think?
> >
> > having a handler for sigbus sounds like a sensible idea ...
> >
> > http://www.linuxprogrammingblog.com/code-examples/SIGBUS-handling
> >
> > as for early vfsstat this could save time for people who try to
> > create unreasonably large rrd files by alerting them before
> > gigabytes of 0s have been allocated ...
> >
> > cheers
> > tob
> >
> >> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Tobias Oetiker <tobi at oetiker.ch> wrote:
> >> > Hi Francois,
> >> >
> >> > Yesterday Francois-Xavier Bourlet wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Hello,
> >> >>
> >> >> On my system rrd_open use mmap and my system support sparse file.
> >> >> That's mean when my disk get full rdd_open can bus error. Here's the
> >> >> scenario in rrd_open:
> >> >>
> >> >> Disk really close to full, few kbytes free
> >> >> open file -> ok
> >> >> seek to end -1 -> ok
> >> >> write 1 -> ok
> >> >> the system will only write the last chunk of the file, every others
> >> >> will be allocated lazily later because of the sparse file feature.
> >> >> So we have a file bigger than the free space available on the system.
> >> >> Next attempt to write on this file, even without extending the size of
> >> >> it will fail with a disk full error.
> >> >>
> >> >> next rrd_open map the file and then
> >> >> memset to zero the whole file... leading to a buserror since the
> >> >> kernel can't write into the file because the filesystem is full.
> >> >
> >> > this happens at create time, right ?
> >> >
> >> >> In my case I just have to extend the disk space available and it's
> >> >> fine. But the problem is you don't have any clue that the bus error
> >> >> happen because you're disk is full, and I really wasted a lots of time
> >> >> before I thought simply checking the free space...
> >> >>
> >> >> I don't really now how to fix the code, maybe we can catch SIGBUS
> >> >> signals, and when discovering that the error is about a file mapping,
> >> >> provide an human readable message on terminal/log?
> >> >>
> >> >> Trying to recover from a bus error on file mapped memory seem to be
> >> >> another challenge...
> >> >>
> >> >> Or rather than memsetting the file to zero, we could simply write
> >> >> zeros in the file before mapping it, and so it would be easy to catch
> >> >> write error.
> >> >
> >> >> Let me know what do you think about it, I am available to patch rrd
> >> >> with the best proposed solution.
> >> >
> >> > how about a cal to statvfs before starting the whole creation
> >> > process ? (for win32 this would bprobably be GetDiskFreeSpaceEx)
> >> >
> >> > cheers
> >> > tobi
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> Regards,
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Tobi Oetiker, OETIKER+PARTNER AG, Aarweg 15 CH-4600 Olten, Switzerland
> >> > http://it.oetiker.ch tobi at oetiker.ch ++41 62 775 9902 / sb: -9900
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Tobi Oetiker, OETIKER+PARTNER AG, Aarweg 15 CH-4600 Olten, Switzerland
> > http://it.oetiker.ch tobi at oetiker.ch ++41 62 775 9902 / sb: -9900
> >
>
>
>
>

-- 
Tobi Oetiker, OETIKER+PARTNER AG, Aarweg 15 CH-4600 Olten, Switzerland
http://it.oetiker.ch tobi at oetiker.ch ++41 62 775 9902 / sb: -9900