Disks on Linux Access Gateway running on VMWare ESX platform go read only under heavy load

  • Document ID:7000715
  • Creation Date:20-Jun-2008
  • Modified Date:26-Apr-2012
    • Micro Focus Products:
      Access Manager (NAM)

Environment

Novell Access Manager 3 Linux Access Gateway
Novell Access Manager 3 Support Pack 3 applied

Situation

VMWare ESX is a supported platform. Under very heavy load, the Linux Access Gateway (LAG) has serious problems where the disks go read only.

Resolution

The bug is in the Linux kernel and has been fixed in SLES9 SP4. The kernel updates have been included with the lagrpms.tar.gz file shipped with Access Manager 3 Support Pack 4. To install the kernel updates, do the following:
  1. copy the lagrpms.tar.gz from the Access Manager 3 SUpport Pack 4 patch to a Linux host
  2. tar -zxvf lagrpms.tar.gz on that host and cd to /lagrpms/unsupported directory
  3. scp the kernel-default-2.6.5-7.308.i586.rpm file to the LAG
  4. on LAG, run 'rpm -Uvh --nodeps --force kernel-default-2.6.5-7.308.i586.rpm'
  5. restart server
We strongly recommend that only VMWare ESX customer experiencing the above problem apply this kernel update. All other customers need not apply this.

Additional Information

This is a known issue with VMWare on certain kernel versions.

It is documented for SLES as TID 7005154 - Filesystem goes read-only in VMware and is also documented in VMware's knowledge base as RHEL5, RHEL4 U4, RHEL4 U3, SLES10, and SLES9 SP3 File Systems may Become Read-Only