[usclug-chat] cyrus-imapd causes hardlock?

Russell Coker russell at coker.com.au
Sun Sep 19 08:13:35 UTC 2004


On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 06:37, Eric Hattemer <hattenator at imapmail.org> wrote:
> Is it possible for cyrus and postfix to cause a hardlock when no other
> programs seem to?  1-10 minutes after I start my mail server, the system
> hardlocks.  I can record and transcode gigabytes of tv shows, run a web
> server, download and upload tons of stuff, and test the system in any
> way with no problems.  Windows has no problems.  Yet when I start cyrus,

Mail servers hit the disk harder than most programs.  The indexing operation 
you refer to probably more than most operations.

Try running some disk benchmark programs on the system and see if you can 
reproduce the problem with a simpler program.  The simpler the test case that 
causes it the easier things will be for people who try and work out what the 
problem is.

Incidentally Linux seems to be more intensive in it's use of hard disks.  Some 
years ago a company I worked for was purchasing hard disks from a company 
that had just bought out a competitor.  Due to the purchase there were two 
different models of disk in each common size (one from each company) that had 
the same part numbers.  One of those disks would work perfectly in Linux 
systems and the other would predictably lose data after about 1-2 weeks!

Both types of disk worked OK in Windows systems.  The company shipped their 
entire stock of bad disks to Windows users (who didn't complain) and I faxed 
a photo-copy of one of the bad disks to the wholesaler with the message 
"please send no more disks that look like this".

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page





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