rsync causing remote system to sometimes go readonly
 

Hey all:

I sync several linux systems using the rsync command.
This has been working well for a couple of years. Lately,
though, sometimes a rsync call from one RHEL 4 machine
to another RHEL 4 machine causes the remote machine to
remount its file system as readonly. I then have to reboot
and run fsck, etc. Quite a pain.

Both x86_64 systems have up-to-date kernels:

Linux luna.nwra.com 2.6.9-78.0.8.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Nov 5 07:14:58 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The rsync command is run within a script that updates selected
subdirectories of my home directory. whisper2 is the name of
the computer to be updated, which is the computer that remounts
/ as readonly:

------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/csh

pushd ~

foreach dirName (classify octave Workshop contracts/Whisper contracts/SDSI)
rsync -avz --exclude="core.*" \
--exclude="*.o" \
--exclude="*.a" \
--exclude="whisperControl" \
--exclude="*.ps" \
--exclude="*.tim" \
--exclude="ICS" \
--exclude="fftw-2.1.3" \
--exclude="*.bin" \
--exclude=".cshrc" \
--exclude="OLD" \
--exclude="Disk_*" \
--exclude="EEG_1*" \
--exclude="Aug2006*" \
/home/spooner/$dirName/ \
whisper2.nwra.com:/home/spooner/$dirName
end

popd

exit
-----------------------------------------------------------

I've gone back and forth with Red Hat Support and they
don't have many clues.

The two involved systems are quite similar and use internal
SCSI disks (no USB disks are involved in the rsync updating).

We moved /var/log/messages to a separate disk on whisper2
because when the remounting to readonly happens, there is
some unreadable line that gets appended to messages. Since
moving /var/log/messages to /disk2, however, I've not been
able to force the problem.

Anyway, since Red Hat is struggling, I thought I'd check here.
Does this problem sound familiar to anyone? I've search LQ
but haven't found anything helpful.

Thanks,

Chad

What do you have on your mount options in fstab ?.
Personally I would be leery of that (target) disk.

syg00:

The target computer is whisper2, and the source computer, luna,
has the following relevant entries in /etc/fstab:

---------------------------------------------------------------
whisper2.nwra.com:/home /mnt/Whisper_whisper2 nfs user,rsize=4096,bg,
soft 0 0
whisper2.nwra.com:/disk2 /mnt/Whisper_disk2 nfs user,rsize=4096,bg,
soft 0 0
whisper2.nwra.com:/mnt/Whisper2RAID_A /mnt/Whisper2RAID_A nfs use
r,rsize=4096,bg,soft 0 0
whisper2.nwra.com:/mnt/Whisper2RAID_B /mnt/Whisper2RAID_B nfs use
r,rsize=4096,bg,soft 0 0
whisper2.nwra.com:/mnt/Whisper2RAID_C /mnt/Whisper2RAID_C nfs use
r,rsize=4096,bg,soft 0 0
whisper2.nwra.com:/mnt/Whisper2RAID_D /mnt/Whisper2RAID_D nfs use
r,rsize=4096,bg,soft 0 0
----------------------------------------------------------

These whisper2 filesystems are not always mounted on luna, however.
I haven't seen any correlation between when they are mounted
and when I get the readonly problem.

Thanks,

Chad