[Xymon] external script problem - question

[Steve Holmes]

Thanks all. The problem has quieted down considerably this week so it isn't
as much of a priority as before. But see my replies below.


On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Henrik Størner <henrik at hswn.dk> wrote:

> On 05-10-2011 17:41, Steve Holmes wrote:
>
>  The test is an external script which basically does a 'sudo touch foo'
>> on each file system and waits for it to either return with no problem,
>> or return with an error indicating that the file system is read-only, or
>> after 60 seconds declares that the file system is 'hung'.
>>
> [snip]
>
>  The problem with the test is that once or twice a day we get a flurry of
>> alerts from a dozen or so servers, all at about the same time reporting
>> that there is a hung file system. Other file systems on the same server
>> are reporting that it takes longer to do the touch than we think it
>> should (e.g. 12 to 25 or even 60 seconds). The alerts all go away the
>> next test cycle. The file systems are on local fiber channel disks (i.e.
>> not NFS mounted). The servers getting the alerts are not all VMs and it
>> is not always the same set of servers that show up.
>>
>
> Sounds nasty, troubleshooting that kind of "only happens occasionally"
> problems is really difficult.
>
> OK, off the top of my head here are some ideas:
>
> * sudo - what kind of user authentication are you using ? If it's LDAP or
> NIS, could that explain why the test suddenly takes longer ?
>
>
Local authentication. So that isn't it.


> * clocks - how do you measure the time it takes to run the test ? If you
> just use "date" before and after the touch-command, what happens if your
> server's clocks are stepped (jump a few seconds) while the test is running?
> In my experience, clocks on virtual machines are horrible at keeping correct
> time and can quite easily skip a couple of seconds if set to follow the
> clock of the host OS.
>
>
The script is sleeping for N seconds and adding N to a counter.  So, I don't
think that is the problem. We increased the total time for a test to 60
seconds (it was 30), but that didn't help. On some systems if we go much
more than 60 seconds per file system the whole test could break the 5 minute
limit (and I'd have to reduce the frequency of the test).

* Have you looked at the vmstat1 graphs for these systems ? How is the "I/O
> wait" on them ? Some types of I/O on Linux systems can cause quite a
> slow-down; deleting large files on ext2 or ext3 systems could be quite
> time-consuming and cause the whole system to really stall. Also doing things
> that touch a lot of files - a large find, or grep'ing through a large number
> of files, especially if you don't mount filesystems with the "noatime"
> option - can cause a lot of I/O that slows down filesystem operations.
>
>
For some reason I don't have vmstat1 graphs. Old problem I've never gone
back to try to fix. So, no...



> * I've seen VMware Workstation consistently bring a system to its knees
> when a VM was being shut down. Apparently some bad interaction between the
> kernel version (2.6.18, if memory serves me right) and the way it was
> updating the virtual disk images - it would just churn away for 5 or 10
> minutes doing nothing but hitting the disk. Disappeared when I upgraded the
> kernel on the box. No idea if your combination of RHEL and ESX could do the
> same thing. But it was quite reproducible here, so it should be easy to
> spot.
>
>
Our problem is really spotty, so probably not this. We've had the VMware
admins looking into underlying problems (which is where we think the problem
really is), but they've not come up with anything.


> Just some thoughts.
>
>
Thanks!


>
> Regards,
> Henrik
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>From Jeremy:

To prove that it's not a Xymon problem, why not create a cron task that does
> the same thing, but logs how long it takes.  If the log shows delays, then
> it's got nothing to do with Xymon.  Perhaps create /etc/cron.d/touchtest
> with the following:
>
>  * * * * * root time touch /path/to/file >> /tmp/touchlog 2>&1
>  50 23 * * * root cp /dev/null /tmp/touchlog
>
>
We thought about doing exactly this, but have not yet implemented it.
Thanks,

Steve
-- 
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. -Juan Ramon Jimenez,
poet, Nobel Prize in literature (1881-1958)

Truth never damages a cause that is just. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
(1869-1948)
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