Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post Reply
youghta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 2:04 pm

Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by youghta »

I have a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10. I followed all directions and am having the following issue.

When copying a large number of files (large or small files) to or from a Samba share, the system freezes. It's running headless at the moment, but the system stops responding on the network. I also created a little daemon that outputs the time every second to a file. The last time in the file corresponds to when the system crashed. It actually crashes before the copy starts. It crashes when the windows box is enumerating the files to be copied.

I have no issue copying a small number of large files.

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.


youghta
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 2:04 pm

Re: Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by youghta »

Thank you. This did fix the issue. Can you elaborate on what the actual problem is? I'd rather not have to turn off power management. Under 9.04 this didn't seem to be an issue.

I appreciate the help...

irads

Re: Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by irads »

The problem involves a too-aggressive ACPI design in the CPU/chipset that overlooks devices activity when entering low-power C-states which results in ungraceful termination of data transfers on these devices.

MikeB
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:32 am

Re: Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by MikeB »

Thank you Irads. This was very helpful. I'd been having problems moving large files from the Fit-PC2 to a Windows machine (both Win2K and Win7 Pro 64). Tried it with Samba and with SCP, and both would get about 50 megs into the transfer and then things would hang. Found in testing after reading the link above that tapping the keyboard on the Fit-PC2 and then re-entering the password for the WinSCP copy session would let things resume, but the workaround of disabling the C-states in the BIOS fixed the problem and a 300 meg transfer went through without a hitch.

Since one of the reasons for using the Fit-PC2 is low power use, disabling C-states to get the network to function properly isn't ideal. Is this something that can be fixed in some other way? BIOS change, use of watchdog timer, etc? Or would I have to rig up a device to tap on the keyboard every few seconds to keep it alive? ;-)

-- Mike B.

irads

Re: Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by irads »

The additional power consumption is up to 0.5W in most scenarios. You decide how bad it is.
Some users reported that supported C-States can be defined in Linux rather than BIOS. Maybe you can tune consumption better this way.

MikeB
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:32 am

Re: Ubuntu 9.10 Freezes when many files copied to SAMBA share

Post by MikeB »

Thanks for the info. 0.5w isn't much compared to any normal PC's use, so I'm still way ahead with the Fit-PC2, but it's a largish percentage of the total for the Fit-PC2. I'll look into the Linux options for dealing with C-state problems. Just wasn't sure if it was a hardware issue or a BIOS issue. Sounds like it's hardware-based.

Post Reply

Return to “Ubuntu 9.10”