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Date:      Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:58:19 -0700
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org>
To:        Guy Helmer <guy.helmer@gmail.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD 9: fdisk -It crashes kernel
Message-ID:  <20130425155818.GA8454@icarus.home.lan>
In-Reply-To: <80F41679-9C3A-4E61-8AAD-403410344C32@gmail.com>
References:  <80F41679-9C3A-4E61-8AAD-403410344C32@gmail.com>

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On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 09:06:49AM -0500, Guy Helmer wrote:
> Encountered a surprise when my disk resizing rc.d script caused FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE to crash. I used "fdisk -It ada0" to determine what the available size of the disk (which happened to be the root disk), and on FreeBSD 9.1 the kernel comes crashing down:
> 
> + fdisk -It ada0
> + /rescue/sed -En 's,.*start ([0-9]+).*size ([0-9]+).*,\1 + \2,p'
> vnode_pager_getpages: I/O read error
> vm_fault: pager read error, pid 65 (fdisk)
> pid 65 (fdisk), uid 0: exited on signal 11
> eval: arithmetic expression: expecting primary: ""
> Entropy harvesting: point_to_pointeval: date: Device not configured
> eval: df: Device not configured
> eval: dmesg: Device not configured
> cat: /bin/ls: Device not configured
>  kickstart.
> eval: cannot open /etc/fstab: Device not configured
> eval: cannot open /etc/fstab: Device not configured
> eval: swapon: Device not configured
> Warning! No /etc/fstab: skipping disk checks
> fstab: /etc/fstab:0: Device not configured
> 
> Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
> cpuid = 1; apic id = 01
> fault virtual address   = 0x0
> fault code                     = supervisor read, page not present
> instruction pointer      = 0x20:0xc0825fc4
> stack pointer               = 0x28:0xc5a088c8
> frame pointer              = 0x28:0xc5a08914
> code segment            = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
>                                      = DLP 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
> processor eflags       = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
> current process         = 91 (mount)
> [ thread pid 91 tid 100056 ]
> Stopped at  g_access+0x24: mlvl 0(%ebx),%eax
> db> where
> Tracing pid 91 tid 100056 td 0xc84c42f0
> g_access(c8481d34,0,1,1,0,…) at g_access+0x24/frame 0xc5a08914
> ffs_mount(c8481d34,c0d78380,2,c5a08c00,c829ae6c,…) af ffs_mount+0xf74/frame 0xc5a08a34
> vfs_donmount(c84c42f0,10000,0,c84cf200,c84cf200,…) at vfs_donmount+0x1423/frame 0xc5a08c24
> sys_nmount(c84c42f0,c5a08ccc,c5a08cc4,1010006,c5a08d08,…) at sys_nmount+0x7f/frame 0xc5a08c48
> syscall(c5a08d08) at syscall+0x443/frame 0xc508cfc
> Xint0x80_syscall() at Xint0x80_syscall+0x21/frame 0xc5a08cfc
> --- syscall (378, FreeBSD ELF32, sys_nmount), eip = 0x480d5feb, esp = 0xbfbfce1c, ebp = 0xbfbfd378 ---
> 
> I'll fix my script to not do this, but it seems odd that fdisk -It can make the disk "go away".

Please provide a full, unmodified copy of your script.

What's confusing to me is that after your sed call (which I don't even
understand, because it doesn't appear to be operating on anything except
stdin/stdout, and we don't know what that is -- again, show the script),
the kernel starts outputting indications that the root disk/filesystem
or its related metadata disappeared:

> vnode_pager_getpages: I/O read error
> vm_fault: pager read error, pid 65 (fdisk)
> pid 65 (fdisk), uid 0: exited on signal 11

Except the kernel stack trace indicates something called sys_nmount(),
which called vfs_donmount(), which called ffs_mount(), which calls
g_access().  All of those scream to me "someone tried to mount
something".  fdisk does not do mounting.

fdisk also shouldn't be writing to LBA 0 (the MBR) if you used -I -t.
I've been staring at fdisk.c for about 20 minutes now and I can't work
out a situation where -I -t would cause the MBR to be rewritten
actively.

The only GEOM calls I see in fdisk.c that would get called are
g_device_path(), g_open(), and g_close().  Actual device I/O uses read()
and write() (only in write_s0() which shouldn't be called).

Furthermore, GEOM has foot-shooting-prevention mechanisms in place (I'm
talking about kern.geom.debugflags) to keep LBA 0 from being modified.
Is your script setting that sysctl to 16/0x10 blindly?  Ahem.

It would also help if you could state exactly what 9.1-STABLE source
you're using; if using svn provide revision (rXXXXXX), else provide
uname -a output.

Finally: I would suggest using gpart(8) instead going forward.  This is
a separate recommendation though; if somehow I'm overlooking something
in fdisk.c where writes to LBA 0 really do happen, then that needs to
get fixed.  But gpart(8) is what you should use in general these days
anyway.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc@koitsu.org |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
| Mountain View, CA, US                                            |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |



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