Array CD 3, "HEAD" (and, probably, Array CD 4) hal issues

[Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)]

Hello.

Matt Zimmerman:

> On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 11:34:01AM +0100, Shot (Piotr Szotkowski) wrote:
> 
> > First, when installing Warty and upgrading it to Hoary on my
> > girlfriend's computer mid-January (a 300 MHz-ish Celeron),
> > I noticed something brings it to a crawl and I have to reset
> > it (hard) mid-upgrade; afterwards everything went ok.
> 
> We need more details.  What brought it to
> a crawl?  What did you observe, and when?

I'm 90% sure it was the installation of the hal package. It happened
somewhere in the middle of installing all of the ubuntu-desktop
dependencies; from one point in time, the package installation process
went unusually slowly and I wasn't able to stop it in a sane manner.
I won't have access to that computer for the forseeable future, though,
so let's drop it and consider it just an example of another Celeron
300 MHz-ish machine having very similar problems.

> > Since Thursday I'm having fun with my newly obtained Celeron 333 MHz on an
> > Intel i440LX motherboard, and I'm seeing the same thing. I tried
> > installing Warty expert and upgrading it to Hoary HEAD, Warty
> > custom-expert and upgrading it to Hoary HEAD before installing
> > ubuntu-base, and now I'm testing Array CD 3, both in expert and
> > server-expert modes, both upgraded to Hoary HEAD and not (i.e.,
> > installation just from the CD's package base).
> 
> Is this the same computer, or a different one?

No, this is my "new" machine which is currently planned to be a small,
headless personal webserver (I'll most probably install ubuntu-base
based Warty on it in the end, although I'm very surprised GNOME 2.9
is quite usable on such a machine).

> > After around twelve reinstalls (last one done packet-by-packet) I've
> > tracked down that the problem is with the hal package. Every time
> > I install it, when the installation gets to the "Restarting system
> > message bus" stage, the system slows to a crawl. It's really quite
> > amazing, first I thought it just hanged hard, but no - if I gave it
> > a lot of time (fifteen minutes?) it finishes the package install and
> > gets back to aptitude, then repaints the aptitude window for another
> > five minutes, lets me exit aptitude (another five minutes...), and
> > a `sudo reboot` takes about twenty-five minutes, but actually works.
> > After the reboot everything seems ok.
> 
> The usual cause for this kind of problem is a hang/slowdown
> when HAL accesses the CD-ROM drive to see if a disc is present
> 
> Here's a hang: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3607

In my case the system doesn't hang, just slows to a near crawl. I can
hear very agitated hard disk activity, switch consoles on a whim, but
logging in on another console takes considerable time, and running top
takes several minutes. It seems there's quite an active pdflush process,
but it's hard to observe it, as top refreshes very slowly.

> And a slowdown: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4049

I'm experiencing it even when installing/upgrading
hal with a disconnected CD-ROM.

> Please get a kernel trace using ctrl+scrolllock or
> alt+sysrq+t and attach it to the appropriate bug:

> http://www.ubuntu.com/wiki/DebuggingSystemCrash

Does this apply to my case as well? The system doesn't crash,
it just slows very much - but works perfectly after a reboot.

I just installed Array CD 4 from scratch and the same problem occurs
again (no wonder, as Array CD 4 has the hal 0.4.7-1ubuntu1 I upgraded
to before).

I'll try to write an extended Array CD 4 email tomorrow, I'll just note
now that there seem to be a regression from Array CD 3 when installing
GRUB on a ReiserFS partition; i.e., I could change all of the partitions
to ReiserFS and install GRUB from the installer, but in Array CD 4 I had
to revert to ext3 on the / partition to get past the GRUB instalation
stage. LILO couldn't install on ReiserFS as well.

Cheers,
-- Shot
-- 
          I have discovered a truly remarkable solution to Fermat's
          Last Theorem which this signature is too small to contain.
====================== http://shot.pl/hovercraft/ === http://shot.pl/1/125/ ===
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