[plug] kernel 2.6.3 production-ready?

[Craig Ringer]

On Thu, 2004-03-04 at 00:11, Denis Brown wrote:
> Is kernel 2.6.3 worth betting the farm on, stability-wise, to get my hands
> on ACLs?   AFAICS, ACLs are natively in the 2.6 tree.

Well, ext3 ACLs are. There doesn't seem to be reiserfs support for ACLs
yet, and I don't know about other filesystems.

> But this will be a production server - backed up, but a production machine
> none the less - and I would prefer stability over convenience if that's
> what it means.

Hmm... well, I'm (reluctantly) using 2.6.3 in production, and it seems
to work well. It seems very zippy when there are _lots_ of processes on
the system.

I am, it turns out, having some trouble with LVM2, though - so if you're
going to use LVM, test carefully first.

In case someone here might know what's going on, this is what happens
when I try to create a snapshot:

# lvcreate -s -n home_s -L 2G -M 2 USER/home
device-mapper: error adding target to table
  device mappper ioctl cmd 9 failed: Invalid argument
  Couldn't load device 'USER-home_s'.
  Problem reactivating origin home

[this is bad - that logical volume, which may be mounted, is now
inaccessable. Until /home is unmounted, it's not possible to remove the
half-created snapshot ... and /home can't be unmounted when the lv it
lives on is inaccessable]:

# lvremove -f USER/home_s
device mapper: error adding target to table
  device mapper ioctl cmd 9 failed: Invalid argument
  Couldn't load device 'USER-home_s'.
  Unable to deactivate logical volume "home_s"

[ You have to fully deactivate the LV /home lives on to be able to
delete the snapshot. The LV can't be deactivated while it has a mounted
FS on it, the snapshot can't be removed while the LV is active, and the
LV is inaccessable so the FS can't be unmounted. This can't be fixed
without a reboot, AFAICT. Post-reboot]:

# lvchange -a n USER/home
# lvremove -f USER/home_s
  Logical volume "home_s" successfully removed
# lvchange -a y USER/home
#

*arrggh*

I /warned/ them there could be problems with the upgrade, but what's one
to say...

> Current comments?   (There's been a little on this in past threads but the
> state of play may well have changed.)

It's working a treat, except for the LVM issue.

Craig Ringer