[Bug 1540407] Comment bridged from LTC Bugzilla

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------- Comment From thorsten.diehl at de.ibm.com 2016-02-29 06:27 EDT-------
(In reply to comment #16)
> > Could you attempt to use the Debian package from Sid on top of the Ubuntu
> system?  This will help rule out kernel related issues vs. userspace package
> bugs.
>
> You can download from here
>
> http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/multipath-tools/multipath-
> tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb
>
> And then force install with
>
> sudo dpkg --force all --install
> multipath-tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb
>
> If this is successful, then I can prepare a package with some updated fixes
> from upstream; there are a number of changes to path related discovery in
> upstream multipath that aren't yet included in the Ubuntu version.

Hi Ryan,

I followed your proposal, installed multipath-tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb as described, and it worked fine and as expected, i.e. described problem does not occur.
On another system I installed both multipath-tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb and kpartx_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb - with the same result.
I did a detach/attach of the zfcp device and found, that it apperas for some seconds in status active faulty running, then it changed to failed faulty running and remained in that state until reattachment of the device. Then it changed back to active ready running.

Hi Christian,

in addition I did the following tests:

1. On a freshly installed xenial (installer version 427, kernel 4.4.0-8) with the already mentioned multipath.conf I found, that no zfcphbaapi stuff is installed per default.
kernel 4.4.0-8
multipath-tools 0.5.0-7ubuntu15 (was 7ubuntu14 before) and kpartx 0.5.0-7ubuntu15
I did a detach/attach of the zfcp device and found, that it apperas for some seconds in status active faulty offline, then it changed to failed faulty offline and vanished and did not reappear upon reattachment of the device. I had the zfcp LUNs configure manually (via sysfs)

2. Then I installed zfcp-hbaapi-utils_2.1.1-0ubuntu1_s390x.deb and
libzfcphbaapi0_2.1.1-0ubuntu1_s390x.deb on top. With these two
additional packages I could not reproduce this problem.

3. I installed a system with kernel 4.4.0-7 and multipath-tools
0.5.0-7ubuntu14 + the above mentioned zfcphbaapi stuff. Problem was
reproducable.

4. I updated that system to multipath-tools 0.5.0-7ubuntu15. Problem was
still reproducable.

5. I updated that system to kernel 4.4.0-8. It should be now similar to
case #2. But problem was still reproducable. strange.

6. I switched several times back and forth between multipath-tools
0.5.0-7ubuntu15 and multipath-tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4_s390x.deb.
With git1 it worked always, with 7ubuntu15 never. (although it did on a
freshly installed system, see #2)

So, for now we have two ways to solve/circumvent this problem:
a) use an updated multipath-tools package (from debian sid)
b) use an updated multipath-tools/kpartx packages from ubuntu (>= version 0.5.0-7ubuntu15) AND zfcp-hbaapi-utils_2.1.1-0ubuntu1_s390x.deb and libzfcphbaapi0_2.1.1-0ubuntu1_s390x.deb on top. But that didn't help always (see case #5 above)

I found different values for path_selector in multipath-tools versions of ubuntu and debian:
ubuntu15: round-robin 0
debian-git: service-time 0
Then I set this in multipath.conf to the (usual) default "round-robin 0"
And with debian-git version the problem was still solved. So this setting should not matter.

Ryan,
although obviously only fixes from multipath-tools_0.5.0+git1.656f8865-4 are required to fix this problem, please consider and analyze, if it is better to get the complete set of patches in both multipath-tools AND kpartx from debian upstream (sid) instead of cherry picking some fixes.
The debian sid combination of multipath-tools AND kpartx does obviously not harm and is already 6 weeks old.

Anyway, I will do some other test with this combination.

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Title:
  multipathd drops paths of a temporarily lost device

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