[CentOS] Odd INFO "120 seconds" in logs for 2.6.18-194.3.1

[Steve Brooks]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2010, Scott Silva wrote:

> on 6-7-2010 1:12 PM Steve Brooks spake the following:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Since upgrading to "2.6.18-194" I am getting odd messages in the logs.
>> Such as;
>>
>> sraid3 kernel  INFO  task pdflush 259 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
>>
>>
>> The output from
>>
>>> grep '120 seconds' /var/log/messages | tr : ' ' | awk '{print $10}' | sort | uniq -c
>>
>>        6 nfsd
>>        4 pdflush
>>
>> This is from an NFS server that since the upgrade has been flakey. I have
>> an identical server running "2.6.18-164.11.1" and no such messages are
>> seen.
>>
>> is anyone else seeing this and/or know what is going on?
>>
>> Steve
>>
> Maybe boot back to the older kernel and see if the messages stop... That would
> eliminate any sudden coincidental hardware problems.

Thanks Scott,

Yes, this is a good idea, however being a production server it 
can't be done immediately. Also, with the kernel messages being 
labeled "INFO" it could be *possibly* just be the new kernel being 
informative and possibly nothing serious but it does look alarming. Having 
done more research now, it appears that upstream distros have had problems 
with this too and experienced software lockups and hangs.

Steve

-- 
Dr Stephen Brooks

http://www-solar.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/
Solar MHD Theory Group
Tel    ::  01334 463735
Fax    ::  01334 463748
E-mail :: steveb at mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk
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