Hi List,
Thanks to some helpful off-list help from someone on the list, I've found out that the trouble is related to using LVM with a HIMEM kernel. I have rebuilt a new kernel without himem support, and snapshots are now working.
On the other hand, if I run this way, I'll have 3GB of memory basically sitting there doing not much else other than contributing to chassis heat.
I also have to get the VFS-Lock patch in there (i'm building a patched kernel now to test it) before snapshots are really useful.
So, does anyone either (a) know what the problem is, or (b) at least know where I should look to try and fix it? I'm guessing that the problem has been solved at least by some of the commerical distros..
Thanks.
-SteveK
Steve Kann wrote:
Hi,
I've seen some others on this (and other lists) who are having this problem, but I haven't been able to find a solution.
I have a new box that I'd like to use with LVM. This will be a production fileserver. I've installed debian woody on it, and upgraded to the latest debian kernel, 2.4.24. I'm using the lvm 1.0.4 tools.
Naturally, I'm spending this time before this box is in use to play with LVM so I know how to do what I need to quickly before the fires hit. So, I've been able to happily create, grow, shrink, and remove lv's, as well as create and remove VGs and PVs.
However, I cannot create a snapshot volume.
This is pretty much why I wanted to use LVM in the first place (backing up a 400G active filesystem would be pretty impossible otherwise).
The basic error I get is:
520 vgcreate -s 128M vg0 /dev/sda7 521 vgdisplay 522 lvcreate -L 256M -nhome vg0
u2:~# lvcreate -s -L128M -c 4k -nhomesnap /dev/vg0/home
lvcreate -- WARNING: the snapshot will be automatically disabled once it gets full
lvcreate -- ERROR "Cannot allocate memory" creating VGDA for "/dev/vg0/homesnap" in kernel
Other snapshot creation attempts, all of which fail the same way: 525 lvcreate -s -L1M -nhomesnap /dev/vg0/home 526 lvcreate -s -L128M -c 1M -nhomesnap /dev/vg0/home
I've tried making a bunch of different volumes on which to base the snapshot, as well as a number of different parameters for the snapshot itself. I thought that perhaps it couldn't handle snapshots that were larger than a certain size, or snapshots of volumes that are beyond a certain size, etc.
I should have plenty of memory: u2:~# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4010744 111160 3899584 0 18444 58084 -/+ buffers/cache: 34632 3976112 Swap: 2097136 0 2097136
If 3.8GB of Real, or 5.8 GB of virtual memory aren't actually enough to create a 128MB snapshot of a 256Mb volume (I tried making it very small!), then something must be very wrong!
Any ideas?
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