I've found the removal of a multipath map (or all of them for that matter) to be troublesome for multipathd, particularly its waitevent pthreads. The dm driver in the kernel was not waking up the dm event waiters so they stayed in the kernel where each one held a reference on the mapped device and its table. This held reference prevented the multipathd from receiving either a uevent or a hotplug event for the removal of the multipath block device -- since it is not removed in this case. --- drivers/md/dm-ioctl.c.orig 2005-07-14 13:33:56.000000000 -0500 +++ drivers/md/dm-ioctl.c 2005-07-14 22:01:04.000000000 -0500 @@ -226,10 +226,22 @@ static void __hash_remove(struct hash_cell *hc) { + struct dm_table *table; + /* remove from the dev hash */ list_del(&hc->uuid_list); list_del(&hc->name_list); unregister_with_devfs(hc); + + /* + * Wakeup any dm event waiters. + */ + table = dm_get_table(hc->md); + if (table) { + dm_table_event(table); + dm_table_put(table); + } + dm_put(hc->md); if (hc->new_map) dm_table_put(hc->new_map); With dm-ioctl.c patched to wake up waiting dm event threads when a mapped device is removed, multipathd has issues. Fixed 3 bugs (1) update_multipath wasn't dealing with an error from setup_multipath. Setup_multipath error path involved the call chain update_multipath_strings->update_multipath_table-> dm_get_map->dm_task_run->ioctl. Since the mpp structure for a block device could be deallocated in setup_multipath, the multipathd could SIGSEGV when it referenced the deallocated mpp memory in update_multipath. (2) The waitevent pthread's dm task structure memory was getting destroyed twice if it ever broke out of its waitevent loop due to the call to waiteventloop returning < 0. I set wp->dmt to null after waiteventloop called dm_task_destroy to prevent free_waiter from doing likewise. (3) setup_multipath was not removing the mpp ptr from the allpaths->mpvec vector if it deallocated the mpp structure memory due to the error occurrence mentioned in (1). This omission would cause multipathd mpvec_garbage_collector to SIGSEGV. Fixed uev_add_map since it had the same issue. diff --git a/multipathd/main.c b/multipathd/main.c --- a/multipathd/main.c +++ b/multipathd/main.c @@ -207,6 +207,7 @@ static int setup_multipath (struct paths * allpaths, struct multipath * mpp) { char * wwid; + int i; wwid = get_mpe_wwid(mpp->alias); @@ -227,6 +228,12 @@ setup_multipath (struct paths * allpaths return 0; out: + /* + * purge the multipath vector + */ + if ((i = find_slot(allpaths->mpvec, (void *)mpp)) != -1) + vector_del_slot(allpaths->mpvec, i); + free_multipath(mpp, KEEP_PATHS); condlog(0, "failed to setup multipath"); return 1; @@ -275,7 +282,8 @@ update_multipath (struct paths *allpaths free_pgvec(mpp->pg, KEEP_PATHS); mpp->pg = NULL; - setup_multipath(allpaths, mpp); + if (setup_multipath(allpaths, mpp)) + goto out; /* mpp freed in setup_multipath */ /* * compare checkers states with DM states @@ -311,7 +319,8 @@ free_waiter (void * data) { struct event_thread * wp = (struct event_thread *)data; - dm_task_destroy(wp->dmt); + if (wp->dmt) + dm_task_destroy(wp->dmt); FREE(wp); } @@ -344,6 +353,7 @@ waiteventloop (struct event_thread * wai dm_task_run(waiter->dmt); pthread_testcancel(); dm_task_destroy(waiter->dmt); + waiter->dmt = NULL; waiter->event_nr++; @@ -509,7 +519,7 @@ remove_maps (struct paths * allpaths) int uev_add_map (char * devname, struct paths * allpaths) { - int major, minor; + int major, minor, i; char dev_t[BLK_DEV_SIZE]; char * alias; struct multipath * mpp; @@ -570,6 +580,12 @@ uev_add_map (char * devname, struct path return 0; out: condlog(2, "add %s devmap failed", mpp->alias); + /* + * purge the multipath vector + */ + if ((i = find_slot(allpaths->mpvec, (void *)mpp)) != -1) + vector_del_slot(allpaths->mpvec, i); + free_multipath(mpp, KEEP_PATHS); return 1; } @@ -874,7 +890,8 @@ get_dm_mpvec (struct paths * allpaths) return 1; vector_foreach_slot (allpaths->mpvec, mpp, i) { - setup_multipath(allpaths, mpp); + if (setup_multipath(allpaths, mpp)) + return 1; mpp->minor = dm_get_minor(mpp->alias); start_waiter_thread(mpp, allpaths); }