sreadahead should support separate /usr, /var etc.

[glance]

Hi.

Im exprimenting with karmic and spotted that sreadahead is started to early and in my setup that makes it exit with a error status when it can't read files in /var.

my sugestion to fix this is to change:

start on starting mountall
to
start on local-filesystems

in /etc/init/sreadahead.conf

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

 summary sreadahead should support separate /usr, /var etc.
 status triaged
 importance low

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[camper365 (camper365)]

I have dedicated partitions for /var, /usr, /boot, /home, and /usr/local
When I boot up, I get the message:
"init: sreadahead main process (395) terminated with status 1"
so I am assuming this is my problem

[bluedream (wangjinfajimmy)]

yeah i got problem like you ,the error message is:
"init: sreadahead main process (910) terminated with status 1"
what's wrong ?

[molostoff (molostoff)]

Similarly, the same as camper365

/etc/init/sreadahead.conf:
#start on starting mountall
start on filesystem

[bluedream (wangjinfajimmy)]

yeah i modified /etc/init/sreadahead.conf file:
      start on local-filesystems
     but now system still show that message:
     init: sreadahead main process (1051) terminated with status 1
    my hardware isn't x86,is Arm s3c6410 armV6 arch.i know karmic supported armV7 but is it support ARMV6 ARCH?

[Egon Alter (egon-alter)]

a better fix would be to change the debugfs mount point from /var/lib/sreadahead/debugfs to /sys/kernel/debug where it belongs. attached patch works for me.

[Tomasz Nowak (tomnowak)]

I had the same issue (/var as a separate filesystem).

The suggested solution works for me:
start on starting mountall
to
start on local-filesystems

Regarding the patch:
Does the change to /sys/kernel/debug will fix it?
There will be still /var/lib/sreadahead/pack file missing every time when /var is on separate filesystem at the time of sreadahead start.

[Egon Alter (egon-alter)]

you are right. it will create /var/lib/sreadahead/pack, but on the next boot it will not find it. Unfortunately, I can't find a better place to put it :-(
stop! what about putting it into initramfs? overkill? no - this would require a block based approch and is less flexible.
anyway - is there a block tracer?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

ureadahead has better support for separate filesystems, when tracing it will generate additional pack files for each of the separate mounts (each one individually optimised) - and uses the mountall-generated "mount" event to run over those.

There's nothing I can do about separate /var though - that's where the pack files have to go, and there's nowhere else sensible (or legal) for them. Frankly, there are bigger problems with /var and boot performance, so it's simply not a concern - if you have separate filesystems, you're not going to get a fast boot.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

ureadahead has now replaced sreadahead in both karmic (via -updates) and lucid

[Arnold_Layne (kostet)]

Fix Released but still the same error message...

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 15:27 +0000, Arnold_Layne wrote:

> Fix Released but still the same error message...
>
It's not an error message, just a warning. As I said in another bug,
Upstart shouldn't actually bitch on the console, but it does - and
there's a bug open about that.

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[Kevin Griffiths (kevin-bainhall)]

Scott, can be explicit about where the Upstart bug is open, so we can take a look at it.
Thanks,
Kevin.

[BigBaaadBob (witr)]

With respect, I think there is a problem because the message never goes away (for me) nomatter how many I reboot and no pack files (or any files at all excepting the debugfs dir) ever get generated in /var/lib/ureadahead/. I have / mounted on /dev/sda1 and /home mounted on /dev/sda3. The above recommended change to /etc/init/ureadahead.conf does nothing but change the order of the error messages at boot time. I didn't try the attached patch. For my karmic system at least ureadhead never works.

So yes, maybe the MESSAGE is not an "error message" but there surely seems to be an error or bug here.

[BigBaaadBob (witr)]

I assume this is why ureadahead isn't:

# ureadahead -v
/var/lib/ureadahead/pack: No such file or directory
ureadahead: Error while tracing: No such file or directory

And I assume the "error while tracing" is because the -updates kernel isn't installed on my system since the kernel version is pinned. I've never tried to update the kernel to -updates, and I can't seem to find a really clear set of instructions on doing that (like, what about modules?) so I'll probably skip it.

[Maxei (maxei-95)]

What is going on? Many people are providing so-called fixes for what? Is this a bug, yes or not? Or is this a problem of configuration (which I doubt)? I have never seen ureadahead errors like these before (I've been using Linux since 2000). So I assume it is a bug introduced in Karmic. Is Ubuntu Karmic going to provide a bug fix release? That is the question. Please, stop puting up your possible solutions, how do you know is not going to screw up someone's system for good? People have different settings and configurations. Let the bug fixers work on this issue that is (as far as I know) new in Karmic. I would like to see an update in the near future that helps solve all conflicts related to ureadahead readahead sreadahead and all the different terminated status (mine is status 4 for example). Is this bug officially solved? I see the mark in the top of this page. I would like that some admin put a message or something to explain where and what to do/ Thanks/

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

ureadahead supports, as far as it can, separated filesystems - but it
cannot support a separate /var

That is unlikely to ever change

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[zorpox (nononinono)]

So, is this bad, or not? My /var is on a separate partition and I'm receiving this errors, but apart from that, everything seems to work.

[ppanon (ppanon)]

>ureadahead supports, as far as it can, separated filesystems - but it
>cannot support a separate /var
Well that's unfortunate because there are very good reasons for having a separate /var and /home, namely that you might want to mount your root filesystem ro, because it should change only occasionally (i.e. updates), whereas /var can be mounted rw. It's a security feature.

[ppanon (ppanon)]

Scott,

I'm having a problem in #524135 which may or may not be related to this. Could you perhaps suggest some additional things I could do to narrow down the source of that bug?

[bl8n8r (bl8n8r-gmail)]

Why would you include a package (in a server system nonetheless) which doesn't allow you to put /var on a separate partition? Separating /var is a basic sysadmin task, otherwise you can have services fill up /var (logs) and DoS the box.

# sudo aptitude purge ureadahead sreadahead
bug "fixed"

[ScottMarlowe (scott-marlowe)]

I have to concur with bl8n8r, including a package that disallows separate /var, especially on a server, is simply not acceptable. Every time a new Ubuntu comes out, the server version seems to get more and more fragile.

I too have this problem and it's cost me many hours of my time the last week, time I could spend doing more productive things than driving 45 minutes to the hosting center because of a package that doesn't like /var being in another mount point.

[Marcus Sentry (thesentry)]

Sorry for status changes, I'm new to launchpad and clicked the wrong link.

Also, I have to agree with bl8n8r, it is annoying that an upgrade of Ubuntu results in so many error/warning messages during boot. Since some are saying that this here really is a bug of upstart, is there already a bug report filed?

[Vladimir Hidalgo (vlad88sv)]

#14 exactly describes my problem and configuration.

packs are never created, so ureadahead is useless for me, it just consume time at boot for no good.

$ sudo ureadahead -v
/var/lib/ureadahead/pack: No existe el archivo o directorio (file or directory not found)
ureadahead: Error al tracear: No existe el archivo o directorio (error while tracing: file or directory not found)

$ cat /etc/fstab
UUID=62c1d60f-f1aa-4e1e-bf84-8f1954bf2c04 / ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=0bd4843f-e10b-477e-9247-00258a680b71 /home ext4 defaults 0 1

[sterios prosiniklis (steriosprosiniklis)]

lucid 10.04
After installing kernel 2.6.36 from
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-maverick/

I get

sudo ureadahead --force-trace --verbose

Counted 4 CPUs
ureadahead: Errore durante il tracciamento: Nessun file o directory
(Error while tracing: No such file or directory)

and pack flie is not being created...

[Julian Kalinowski (julakali)]

ureadahead doesnt work with mainline unpatched kernels.
Use an Ubuntu kernel and it works.