Kernel panic in ext3:dx_probe, help needed

Theodore Tso tytso at mit.edu
Tue Jul 31 06:16:46 UTC 2007


On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 09:09:34PM -0700, Ulf Zimmermann wrote:
> 
> Over 10 nodes, brand new install from kickstart. I can reproduce it
> every time. Use the EL4 Update 5 cciss driver, no problem, install HP
> provided driver, it panics at shutdown/reboot.

The assertion failure is a sanity check when looking up a directory
entry via the htree.  It triggers when the size field in the root node
of the htree (i.e., the directory index) is larger it could possibly
be.  This can happen only if the htree directory is corrupted, or the
on-disk buffer cache of directory is corrupted.

If you run e2fsck -f on the filesystem after you reboot, does it
report any errors?  If not, it's probably the buffer cache which is
getting corrupted.  This is probably more likely, if I had to guess.

> Turn off dir_index on root and use the HP driver, no problem either.

My guess is that the driver is doing something screwy at shutdown,
corrupting some directory in the buffer cache in memory.  As the
shutdown scripts continue to execute, one of then accesses the
corrupted directory, and this triggers the assertion failure.  I agree
it's odd that is so repeatable, but the assertion that was generated
is pretty clear about what caused it.  Without directory indexing
enabled, the filesystem code is either not noticing the corruption, or
it's printing a warning which is being ignored instead of causing an
assertion failure.

My recommendation would be to file a bug report with HP about their
device driver.

					- Ted




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