Kernel panic in ext3:dx_probe, help needed

[Ulf Zimmermann]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: "evil at g-house.de"@mail.g-house.de
[mailto:"evil at g-house.de"@mail.g-
> house.de] On Behalf Of Christian Kujau
> Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 19:04
> To: Ulf Zimmermann
> Cc: ext3-users at redhat.com
> Subject: RE: Kernel panic in ext3:dx_probe, help needed
> 
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Ulf Zimmermann wrote:
> >>> believe before the cciss driver is getting unloaded. The last
> >>> messages I am able to see are:
> >>>
> >>> md: stopping all md devices.
> >>> md: md0 switched to read-only mode.
> 
> I think these messages are the real cause of the ext3 errors.
> 
> > Ok, found more information. EL4 sets dir_index for / (cciss/c0d0p6
as we
> > are installing it). The RedHat provided cciss driver (2.6.14-RH2)
has no
> > problem with that, the latest cciss driver from HP, 2.6.16-6, does.
> > Turning off dir_index for /, forcing fsck during reboot and
everything
> > is fine.
> 
> A device driver should not care about filesystem features, IMHO.
Either
> there are problems with the cciss driver (syslog messages please) or
the
> ext3 fs is corrupted - in which case fsck should be run.

I can reproduce this on 8+ servers, 6 of them were just installed
yesterday afternoon. Using "tune2fs -O ^dir_index /dev/cciss/c0d0p6"
followed by a "touch /forcefsck && reboot" leads to no panics are reboot
time.

I have reported this to HP for now.

Ulf.