Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 22:35:48 +0200 From: Maks Verver <m.verver@student.utwente.nl> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: System hangs when /var partition full (vnode_pager_putpages errors) Message-ID: <200804032235.48678.m.verver@student.utwente.nl>
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Hi, I recently encountered an error, where executing the ImageMagick "convert" tool as an unpriviliged user caused the system to hang. The error is similar to one reported in 2004: http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/htdig/freebsd-stable/2004-March/006493.html There is also an open bug report: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/67919 I'll give some more details on my situation, although it's really very similar to the one described on the mailing list. I use ImageMagick to resample a 300kb 1024x768 resolution JPEG file to 800x600, which causes ImageMagick to create a temporary file (not sure how large, sorry) in /var/tmp. The /var paritition does not have enough space apparently, and the system hangs, while printing repeatedly: kernel: vnode_pager_putpages: I/O error 28 kernel: vnode_pager_putpages: residual I/O 65536 at 74284 kernel: pid 42 (syncer), uid 0 inumber 70779 on /var: filesystem full At this point, the system still responds to ping, but anything else (presumable anything involving disk I/O) is impossible, including logging in locally. (In the previous discussion it was suggested that the hang-up was actually caused by the amount of messages being printed, but this is not the case, as in FreeSD 7 these messages are printed only once each second.) The bug report is from 2004 (last modified in 2005); is there any chance this will be resolved in the future? I can work around it temporarily by ensuring there is enough space on /var (and using ulimit when I invoke convert) but it still means that any malevolent user can crash the system. That's the kind of shenanigans I'd expect on a Linux system ;-) not on FreeBSD which is usually very stable. To summarize: are people aware this problem still exists, is it recognized as an important issue, and are there plans to fix it? Kind regards, Maks Verver.
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