Re: [Vserver] problems starting and stopping a vserver: partially solved

From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert_at_13thfloor.at>
Date: Fri 03 Mar 2006 - 14:24:36 GMT
Message-ID: <20060303142436.GA22212@MAIL.13thfloor.at>

On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 02:22:24PM +0100, alexander goeres - lieblinx.net wrote:
> Hello Herbert,
> I found my error with the zope-start at vserver-startup: it was a
> missing PATH in the vserver's init script for zope. I'm sorry to
> having bothered the list and you with that..

good to hear ...

> That doesn't exactly solve my other problems regarding the unclean
> shutdowns of a vserver that was started with the fakeinit-flag. But it
> changes them more or less to purley academic problems, since I don't
> need this fakeinit stuff now no more.

well, let me add two notes here and anser the questions
of the previous email (for the archives)

first, plain init style starts an init process which
takes over control of starting and stopping guest
services, so the tools rely on the guest init doing
the proper things, even on shutdown :)

second, the fakeinit flag is commonly misunderstood,
as it originally had a different meaning and now serves
dual purpose, giving the guest init pid=1 and showing
a 'fake' init pid if there is no init at all

> best regards,
> Alexander
>
> Am Freitag, 3. März 2006 13:12 schrieb alexander goeres - lieblinx.net:
> > Hello Herbert,
> >
> > Thanx for the quick reply.
> >
> > Am Donnerstag, 2. März 2006 16:08 schrieb Herbert Poetzl:
> > > On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 03:39:09PM +0100, alexander goeres -
> > > lieblinx.net
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > > Hello List ,
> > > >
> > > > I recently set up a new machine with Version 2.0.1 of the
> > > > vservers and 0.30.210 of the util-vserver. It's a vanilla kernel
> > > > 2.6.15-3 on a debian host on a AMD 64 3200+.
> > > >
> > > > There I discovered some problems with the startup of services
> > > > inside the vservers (debian guests). Zope instances that are
> > > > started through init-scripts fail and die after some time
> > > > without any further notice.
> > >
> > > might be interesting to add an 'strace -fF -o zope.trace ...' to
> > > the relevant section of the startup script (the zope script) so
> > > that we might get an idea what happens and why it fails
> >
> > I followed your advice and got about 18MB of logfile for the start
> > procedure during vserver startup and about 6Mb during a start from
> > within a vserver. Well, now I'm trying to pin down an inhouse
> > programmer to explain that to me .. :-/
> >
> > > > Starting them after the init-procedure works as it should. I
> > > > fear that this is mainly zope-related but it can't be only
> > > > a mistake with zope since it was working perfectly on older
> > > > vserver-versions.
> > >
> > > do they stay 'forever' then, or do they fail/die after some time
> > > too, when started _after_ the init procedure?
> >
> > Starting zope with the init-script after the vserver-startup makes
> > the instances permanent, just as it should.
> >
> > > > If anybody here had run into a similar problem and had solved it
> > > > I'd gladly accept any hints to the solution.
> > >
> > > are you sure that the 'only' thing you changed was the kernel and
> > > util-vserver? maybe a distro update too? maybe a new hardware?
> >
> > I was mistaken to claim that the zope-startup through init-scripts
> > worked on previous vserver versions. I checked all our hosts and
> > found that it had _never_ worked on the hosts with vserver 1.9.x
> > to 2.0.1. I just never had the idea to test that, assuming that of
> > course it would be functional and since I never had to restart the
> > vservers I failed to notice this.
> >
> > So I guess it's rather really a zope problem. I put that in the back
> > to investigate it later. So there's only my problems with using
> > fakeinit left.
> >
> > > > Trying to solve this I started the relevant vservers with the
> > > > fakeinit-flag and the plain initstyle. Now the start of the
> > > > vserver's init scripts is
> > > >
> > > > normal but stopping the vserver fails with the notice:
> > > >
> > > > >host:/etc/vservers# vserver testserver stop A timeout occured
> > > > >while waiting for the vserver to finish and it will be killed
> > > > >by sending a SIGKILL signal. The following process list might
> > > > >be useful for finding out the reason of this behavior:
> > > > >
> > > > >----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > >12105 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 init [2]
> > > > >12254 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /sbin/syslogd
> > > > >12261 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -bd
> > > > > -q30m 12266 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd
> > > > >12273 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
> > > > >12276 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /usr/sbin/atd
> > > > >12279 120 testserver ? SNs 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
> > > > >----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > > Sometimes this list is empty.
> > >
> > > that's not too unusual, and you might fix that in the shutdown
> > > script by killing off all kind of stuff inside the guest, which
> > > just seems not to be done atm ...
> >
> > Starting and stopping the vservers with the sysv initstyle and
> > without the fakeinit flag shows that the services are started and
> > stopped as intended. All services are started though, when starting
> > a vserver with the fakeinit flag. Why should the shutdown procedure
> > fail?

because in this case the guest init and it's scripts
are responsible for a proper shutdown, which obviously
isn't done in your case ...

the reasons for this could be:

 - improper scripts inside the guest
 - badly configured init (inittab)
 - kernel issues we fixed in recent versions

only detailed investigation would show what the _real_
cause is ...

best,
Herbert

> > Is there anything to be changed within the vservers when switching
> > to plain initstyle and using the fakeinit flag? The vservers
> > themselves are all debian guests.
> >
> > > > I'd be glad if anybody had an idea how to debug this: either
> > > > start the services nomally at vserver-startup (preferred) or
> > > > getting rid of this fakeinit-stop problem.
> > >
> > > HTH,
> > > Herbert
> >
> > Regards,
> > Alexander
>
> --
> netzwerk- & systemadministrator
> -------------------------------------------
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Received on Fri Mar 3 14:25:16 2006

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