<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1>Hi folks,<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>First time contributor, but I felt that what I discovered was (probably) a very rare situation. <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>I’m running a Centos server (my only Linux deployment) to which customers all over the U.S. connect to process their micro-lender businesses. There are several VM’s, among other one which runs the fortress system, called a2. In the beginning the .raw file was about 10GB, which was a 5X overkill in terms of capacity, at the time. <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>For years we had no problems and the CentOS box would tick over day after day without as much as a hiccup. <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>About three months ago a2 started to slow down, almost to the point of timing out when applications and users log on. The band-aid was to copy an earlier a2.raw backup over the current one on a regular basis, and it would rectify the problem. At first applying this band-aid on Sunday nights, would suffice. But, later we had to increase it to twice a week and these last couple of weeks we had to do it almost every night. The system also sent alerts that a “Degraded Array event had been detected on md device /dev/md1”. Inspecting the drives showed no crisis. <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Today it folded completely and brought the system down, with clients’ “our computers are down” response to their customers walking into their stores. Restarting the box just brought a2 to a paused state, never recovering. We had to killall to get rid of it.<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Having nowhere else to go with it, I decided to rebuild a2 in another, separate drive to at least address the degraded array alerts. As I edited the .xml file, I saw the following:<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p><source file='/var/lib/libvirt/:machines/a2/a2-disk1.raw'/><o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>What the hell was that colon doing there? I checked the size of the .raw file. It has grown to over 96GB. Just to check the sanity-box, I checked the other VM’s .xml files and they didn’t have a colon, as I expected. <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>I removed the colon and virsh-started a2, which fired up immediately, with the rest of the system following suit. No doubt that “:” was the culprit!<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>My question is: Would that colon cause an append-action to the .raw file? We have no idea when it got in there or how. We haven’t worked on that xml file for a long time. Why would a2 even fire up at all? <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>It would be great to hear what the guru’s think about that…<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Thanks<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Nico van Niekerk<o:p></o:p>Agoura Hills, CA 91301<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p></div></body></html>