[ale] slocate updatedb locked files?

[Warren Myers]

I don't know if this will be on the right track, but since you asked for a
response to your question, here's a thought (might be way off base, not
sure).

How far apart are the cron jobs for slocate and the incremental (or full)
backup?

I've had hangs in the past from cron jobs taking too long and overlapping,
though it's pretty infrequent since anacron exists - since moving to CentOS
4 from 3, I haven't had any overlapping cron jobs hang against each other.

Warren

On 1/10/07, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:
>
>  Some time back (mid-October) we noticed a dramatic increase in CPU load
> during a weekend.   On researching this we were able to trace it back to a
> file on an ext3 filesystem that would cause any process that attempted to
> access it to hang (thereby adding to the runq).  Since the slocate cron
> job ran every day as did an incremental or full backup they too would get
> hung and add to the runq.  This was the first time such an issue had been
> noted in over a year of running this RH AS 3 system.   The issue was
> solved by rebooting the server.   The file in question was easily accessible
> after the reboot.
>
> Overnight our incremental backup failed and I see once again that slocate/updatedb
> has hung on a file but it is not the same file nor even the same filesystem
> as the prior one though it is an ext3 filesystem.
>
> We're going to reboot to clear the problem but I'm wondering if this is
> being caused by slocate/updatedb or is it just the first thing that finds
> it.  If the latter; what is causing the initial file lock.
>
> P.S.  Before anyone suggests it ? of course we have tried doing
> progressive kills on all processes referencing the file ? the kills
> including kill -9 do not work.
>
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>
>


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