Total system freezes since at least Linux 3.11 – the same with 3.12

frumble · 2013-11-15 18:30:52

Hey, I have some serious problems with my installation. Since around the time of kernel 3.11 I wasn't able to use my system and stayed on 3.10 (and the rest of my system before the upgrade). Not sure if this is directly kernel related but I think this is the nearest possibility. So, first I thought it might be a glitch and the updates would solve it and today I installed kernel 3.12 and the latest updates with the same issue.
I have a Radeon 7770 HD with the newest Catalyst beta. My system was on btrfs with /, /home with btrfs too, /boot is ext4. AMD Phenom II X6 1100T on Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3.
Symptoms: First, with btrfs, it booted into KDM, I logged in and the KDE Splash screen freezed. Then I jumped to tty1 and saw this kernel panic – or it looks to me like a kernel panic, I don't know. Some mentions of btrfs there, so I copied my / to a backup drive with rsync, formatted the partition in ext4 and copied back my system to the SSD (changed the fstab, reconfigured Grub, you get it). Now, on ext4, I get into KDE – sometimes. Sometimes the KDE Splash freezes too or simply doesn't get further (and I can still move the mouse but don't kill X or go to tty1). When a login succeeds, my system seems to work... For a couple of minutes. Maybe two, three. Reproducible. Then I get the total freeze again. This is the absolute horror! Right now, I'm writing out of an Ubuntu parallel installation. Have you any ideas what this could cause? Thank you!!

Last edited by frumble (2013-11-15 19:18:05)

frumble · 2013-11-15 22:47:03

I went back to my backup. Linux 3.10.10-1 (+ no other updates since then) and no problems... I suspect 3.11/3.12 doesn't like my /home in btrfs too... Strange problems. Shouldn't btrfs be filesystem-stable since a long time? I can't find any reports from others about big btrfs issues with 3.11+... But I am aware of some pretty strange btrfs behaviors anyway.
I think about reformating /home with a clean btrfs and trying this upgrade again. But all my media partitions are btrfs too. Hope there is 'just' something corrupt with my /home and former / partition. If anybody knows something, please help!

WonderWoofy · 2013-11-15 23:02:30

I am a btrfs user, I have everything on btrfs subvolumes with the exception of the EFI System Partition (which is obviously on vfat). I have no idea about how you are coming to the conclusion that this is btrfs related, as you have not provided any real information except for your own speculation.

frumble wrote:

Shouldn't btrfs be filesystem-stable since a long time?

No. It is still considered experimental, though things are improving quite rapidly. This being the case, anything you have on btrfs should also have up-to-date and tested backups, or that data can basically be considered not important and disposable. (In reality this hold true for any filesystem, but experimental ones in particular.)

When you make the filesystem, it pretty clearly prints a big ass warning that tells you that you have formatted the partition with an experimental filesystem... not sure how that might be misinterpreted.

It sounds like you jumped into btrfs without reading much of anything about it. You should go to the btrfs wiki (https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page) and read though the information provided there. Being a btrfs user means that you do so with the understanding that there are going to be certain risks, and every effort is made to direct you to this documentation so that you have a basic understanding of those risks.

If anybody knows something, please help!

Having said all that above, I should point out that you have really done next to nothing in terms of providing real and useful debugging data. Even your picture of the kernel panic was rather small and quite blurry. You need to gather relevant data from your own machine to share with those you wish to seek help from. No one else can do this for you.

You say that you have not found any other reports of issues with btrfs on 3.11+... I have to say that if that is the case you haven't looked vary hard.

frumble · 2013-11-15 23:36:50

I'm using btrfs since late 2011 and I'm totally aware of the experimental status but I thought the data structure must be stable in some form. I'm following the development on Phoronix and reading the comments section. Many others use this as their main FS too. Even openSUSE wants to promote btrfs to its standard FS. I have backups, but this shouldn't occur on btrfs in this heavy form. I can't go into much more detail with my problem because the system just freezes and there is no log. BTW, the latest openSUSE 13.1 RC works like a charm with btrfs too (Linux 3.11) on another partition and has no problems accessing and writing to my Arch partitions. There is someone with each release who is stumbling into problems with btrfs but the majority of uses from whom I read runs it perfectly stable.
My initial suspicion about btrfs was that I've had problems with btrfs in the past with similar symptoms like umounting and kernel panics. For instance, see line 136.283030 in the photo: "BUG: soft lockup - CPU#2 stuck for 22s [umount:866]". A couple of lines later again and "btrfs" in the " [<>]" section.

Last edited by frumble (2013-11-16 11:12:14)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-15 18:30:52

Total system freezes since at least Linux 3.11 – the same with 3.12

#2 2013-11-15 22:47:03

Re: Total system freezes since at least Linux 3.11 – the same with 3.12

#3 2013-11-15 23:02:30

Re: Total system freezes since at least Linux 3.11 – the same with 3.12

#4 2013-11-15 23:36:50

Re: Total system freezes since at least Linux 3.11 – the same with 3.12

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