journald intended to dump core on write error?

Hi!

 

A SLES15 SP6 machine running in VMware recently showed severe I/O hangs (which seem to be related to Veam backup software making snapshots when also VMware snapshots of the VM exist).

The point was that even direct reads were hanging for about three minutes until the kernel logged a “kernel: sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] tag#801 task abort on host 0, 00000000aade996c”.

So most likely the read would not provide any data while the write would not have stored any.

 

In that context I noticed journald dumping core like this:

 

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 kernel: sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] tag#217 task abort on host 0, 000000004f9d9a0f

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: Finished User Runtime Directory /run/user/0.

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: Starting User Manager for UID 0...

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: Process 747 (systemd-journal) of user 0 dumped core.

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: Coredump diverted to /var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.systemd-journal.0.54731128d84044c8922ec7e1e329e024.747.1740467>

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: Stack trace of thread 747:

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #0  0x00007fe837923f3a fsync (libc.so.6 + 0x123f3a)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #1  0x00007fe837e5bda3 n/a (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x25bda3)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #2  0x00007fe837e5ead5 journal_file_append_object (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x25ead5)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #3  0x00007fe837e63c3e n/a (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x263c3e)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #4  0x00007fe837e64675 journal_file_append_entry (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x264675)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #5  0x00005582df343506 n/a (systemd-journald + 0x10506)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #6  0x00005582df355306 n/a (systemd-journald + 0x22306)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #7  0x00005582df34711c n/a (systemd-journald + 0x1411c)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #8  0x00007fe837e88674 n/a (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x288674)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #9  0x00007fe837e88941 sd_event_dispatch (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x288941)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #10 0x00007fe837e89208 sd_event_run (libsystemd-shared-254.so + 0x289208)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #11 0x00005582df33b98d n/a (systemd-journald + 0x898d)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #12 0x00007fe837840e6c __libc_start_call_main (libc.so.6 + 0x40e6c)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #13 0x00007fe837840f35 __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (libc.so.6 + 0x40f35)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: #14 0x00005582df33bbe1 n/a (systemd-journald + 0x8be1)

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd-coredump[24229]: ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Failed with result 'watchdog'.

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Consumed 2.973s CPU time.

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: Started User Manager for UID 0.

Feb 25 08:03:30 v04 systemd[1]: systemd-journald.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.

 

The point is: Is it expected that journald aborts this way, or is it considered to be a bug? Version was systemd-254.23-150600.4.25.1.x86_64

 

Kind regards,

Ulrich