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Date:      Mon, 22 Aug 2016 21:37:19 -0700
From:      Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com>
To:        Jan Mikkelsen <janm@transactionware.com>
Cc:        "freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org" <emulation@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Odd behavior with virtualbox-ose-4.3.38
Message-ID:  <CAN6yY1s6%2BqdMJ5BpmkBB_3H1a8HPSvAoaS3QobcFGMHKfXq1Cw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAN6yY1s=EPL-nYxDrgvgxG4xQnhVaOiODwHLy3MXX-dqpddouA@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAN6yY1vn_o%2B=bX7MRNwnurp_G%2BDRhD3sfSS63-1hx4JbYsVaSw@mail.gmail.com> <CAN6yY1sG92DUR0-7Y_wE-r94%2B22JZszgcsOy=XrY=J77njUC_Q@mail.gmail.com> <2418C811-3C6E-4837-B6A5-51DB4C425EB4@transactionware.com> <CAN6yY1v%2BfxZKYexP5m=xUtqaoPjm1zM_4LHXtY5YD_2qAecOoQ@mail.gmail.com> <59E9F6CE-0F2B-40E1-B78D-AF9DFBCED280@transactionware.com> <CAN6yY1s=EPL-nYxDrgvgxG4xQnhVaOiODwHLy3MXX-dqpddouA@mail.gmail.com>

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On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 4:30 PM, Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 12:54 PM, Jan Mikkelsen <janm@transactionware.com=
>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 23 Aug 2016, at 02:25, Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 1:50 AM, Jan Mikkelsen <janm@transactionware.com=
>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Do you have aio loaded or compiled into your kernel? If so, does it kee=
p
>>> happening without aio?
>>> [ =E2=80=A6 ]
>>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion, but, no. This is on my trusty Lenovo T520
>> laptop and no aio to be found. My configuration is just:
>> include           GENERIC
>> ident             GENERIC_BSD4
>>
>> nooptions         SCHED_ULE               # ULE scheduler
>> options           SCHED_4BSD              # 4BSD scheduler
>>
>> I still can't be sure if the problem was triggered by the move to VB 5 o=
r
>> t FreeBSD-11 (or a combination of both).
>>
>>
>> Yes, the problem could be in many places. However, if you=E2=80=99ve gon=
e to
>> FreeBSD 11, you have more aio than you think.  From UPDATING:
>>
>> 20160301:
>> 	The AIO subsystem is now a standard part of the kernel.  The
>> 	VFS_AIO kernel option and aio.ko kernel module have been removed.
>> 	Due to stability concerns, asynchronous I/O requests are only
>> 	permitted on sockets and raw disks by default.  To enable
>> 	asynchronous I/O requests on all file types, set the
>> 	vfs.aio.enable_unsafe sysctl to a non-zero value.
>>
>> Are you running the VM against a raw disk device? You can check the
>> VBox.log output =E2=80=94 If you are not using aio, you should see an en=
try like
>> this:
>>
>> AIO: Async I/O manager not supported (rc=3DVERR_NOT_SUPPORTED). Falling
>> back to simple manager
>>
>> If you are using AIO, you will should see entries like:
>>
>> AIOMgr: Default manager type is "Async"
>> AIOMgr: Default file backend is =E2=80=9CNonBuffered"
>>
>>
>> AIO issues were not a big issue for a long time but some recent updates
>> to 4.3.something (or other environmental issues, possibly load) led me t=
o
>> turn aio off on a bunch of 10.x machines running a significant number of
>> VMs (~25). I=E2=80=99m have been curious about whether the aio change wo=
uld cause
>> problems with an upgrade to 11.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jan.
>>
>>
> BINGO!
>
> Thank you so much, Jan! This does explain a great deal of what I was
> seeing and why.
>
> Now the question... how can I disable it? I'm guessing that
> "kern.features.aio=3D0" in /boot/loader.conf might do the trick, but the =
man
> page does not mention this at all. Also, I guess it is time to open a bug
> report on this. FWIW, the problem does seem to be linked to disk activity=
.
> I had the system locked up and had to kill the process. When I rebooted,
> the system told me that a disk check was needed, but I had it lock up
> several time (3, I think) before it made it through the check without
> locking up again. Once that was complete, the system started and ran
> normally again. This also now fits rather well with an aio issue.
>
> Not too sure how to go about collecting more information for the PR,but
> I'll open it with what I have.
>
> Thanks again, Jan!
> --
> Kevin Oberman, Retired Network Engineer
>

FYI, there is a PR on this.
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3D168298

I have updated the ticket with what I have seen, especially that it is not
ZFS specific. I have also made the adjustment in sysctls as shown in the
ticket (comment 3) and will see how things works.
--
Kevin Oberman, Retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman@gmail.com



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