WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

Re: [Xen-devel] Memory allocation with rebooted HVM

To: Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Memory allocation with rebooted HVM
From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:12:05 -0400
Cc: "xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John <lists.xen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:16:34 -0700
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0910131928480.8383@kaball-desktop>
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
References: <C6FA83C9.1754C%keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <alpine.DEB.2.00.0910131928480.8383@kaball-desktop>
Sender: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05)
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 07:30:32PM +0100, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Keir Fraser wrote:
> > On 13/10/2009 19:13, "Stefano Stabellini" <stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > >> This seems to have been triggered just by that one domU being restarted.
> > >> I've seen this before as well, when a 4G domU tried to restart and hosed 
> > >> a
> > >> box that only had 3G of memory free (on top of the 4G it was using).
> > > 
> > > It seems to me that the new domain is always created after the old one
> > > has been destroyed with the exception that the old stubdom may still be
> > > alive but one stubdom uses only 32MB of ram, therefore cannot be the one
> > > preventing you from restarting the domain, especially in the case above
> > > where you had 3G free.
> > 
> > How much guest memory might the stubdom map? Could the stubdom be preventing
> > the guest's memory from being freed, by holding references to the pages?
> > 
> 
> Yes it could, this can also be the reason why he was able to reproduce
> this problem only few times (it depends on how much memory the stubdom has
> mapped, and that can vary from case to case).

We had encountered this problem in the past with blkback and with the SCSI disks
being iSCSI. The page's had a page-reference that would never decrement and 
the guest would stay in its zombie state. I've posted a patch some-time ago:

http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-09/msg00561.html

that can help troubleshoot if this is indeed this type of failure.

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel