[ewg] OpenSM 1.5.4 Boot Problem

Hal Rosenstock hal at dev.mellanox.co.il
Wed Dec 14 18:22:50 PST 2011


Hector,

On 12/14/2011 12:14 PM, Hector Abrach wrote:
> Hal,
> 
> Thank you very much for the support, I am the same person from the gmail
> account so I will respond through here.
> 
> Attached is a picture of the switch serial number:

OK; I see now; that's an 8 port unmanaged QDR switch.

> I am indeed using OFED 1.5.4-rc3. My experiment consists of a 7 server
> system which I reboot via a script over and over again. Technically
> speaking the switch is not being powered off or physically rebooted. My
> server system is what is being rebooted.

So the switch stays up and the servers (including the one OpenSM is on)
is rebooted, right ?

> I am running OpenSM on one of
> the 7 servers. This means I'm constantly shutting down and rebooting
> OpenSM. I am running OpenSM on QNX but we have not had this problem
> until we decided to upgrade to this switch.

Do the servers run QNX rather than Linux ? Are you saying all OpenSM
code is the same as stock OpenSM 3.3.12 (OFED 1.5.4-rc3) ?

Is the topology the 7 servers and the 1 switch and if you use other
switches you don't see this issue ?

> The problem is that every 1 out of 15 of this remote reboots OpenSM
> stalls or times out because stats->qp0_mads_outstanding did not reach
> zero. Please excuse my ignorance as I'm relatively new at this but how
> do I verify if it is a timeout problem vs a stall?
> 
> You also mentioned that you'd like to see the Verbose output of openSM;
> however, when I run in Verbose mode I don't see the problem. It appears
> as if the verbose output stalls enough time to give the switch time to
> do what ever it needs to do and hence not have the problem occur. But
> this is the last I see when the problem occurs:
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> OpenSM 3.3.12
> Command Line Arguments:
>  Log file max size is 5 MBytes
>  Log File: /tmp/opensm.log
> -------------------------------------------------
> OpenSM 3.3.12
> 
> Entering DISCOVERING state
> 
> Using default GUID 0x2c9020023277d
> 

Is there anything interesting in the log file (when running normally not
with verbosity on) ?

> The problem occurs in function osm_vl15intf.c -> vl15_poller in the else
> statement.
> 
> if (p_madw != (osm_madw_t *) cl_qlist_end(p_fifo)) {
>         OSM_LOG(p_vl->p_log, OSM_LOG_DEBUG,
>         "Servicing p_madw = %p\n", p_madw);
>         if (osm_log_is_active(p_vl->p_log, OSM_LOG_FRAMES))
>         osm_dump_dr_smp(p_vl->p_log,
>         osm_madw_get_smp_ptr(p_madw),
>         OSM_LOG_FRAMES);
> 
>         vl15_send_mad(p_vl, p_madw);
> } else
>         /*
>            The VL15 FIFO is empty, so we have nothing left to do.
>          */
>         status = cl_event_wait_on(&p_vl->signal,
>                   EVENT_NO_TIMEOUT, TRUE);
>
> It won't move forward from the cl_event_wait_on in this line of code.

So it's stuck here forever and never gets past this ?

> However, there are other locations such as wait_for_pending_transactions
> in the do_sweep function that won't move forward from. But I believe
> this to be a side effect of the problem I'm mentioning.
> 
> When you mention what is my timeout, I'm guessing you refer to
> max_smps_timeout which is used in the second while loop within
> vl15_poller? For this setting I am using the default which is defined in
> osm_subnet.c as:
> 
> p_opt->transaction_timeout = OSM_DEFAULT_TRANS_TIMEOUT_MILLISEC;
>     p_opt->transaction_retries = OSM_DEFAULT_RETRY_COUNT;
>     p_opt->max_smps_timeout = 1000 * p_opt->transaction_timeout
> *p_opt->transaction_retries;
> 
> Would you explain to me what are the advantages or disadvantages of
> OSM_DEFAULT_SMP_MAX_ON_WIRE? 

It allows for more SMPs to be outstanding on the IB wire which helps
with subnet discovery/initialization, etc. So limiting SMPs to 1 will
slow things down but maybe that doesn't matter in your subnet.

> Does this parameter change my bandwidth
> performance at all?

It's a minor amount of bandwidth and is used to limit the SMPs which
unlike other VLs are not flow controlled so you can overflow the
dedicated buffers for those if OpenSM or diag tools send too quickly.

-- Hal

> I noticed that when using the default setting of 4 I get into the else
> of the above if statement when there are 4 qp0_mads_outstanding. I
> noticed that if I change OSM_DEFAULT_SMP_MAX_ON_WIRE to 1 I don't get
> the failure I'm mentioning at all. Partly (I think) because I don't
> enter the else in the if statement until there is 1 qp0_mads_outstanding.
> 
> I hope this explains the problem well enough and it may be a time out
> problem but I'd like to understand why the problem is occurring.
> Thank you very much,
> 
> Hector Abrach
> 
> 
> From: 	Hal Rosenstock <hal at dev.mellanox.co.il>
> To: 	Hector Abrach <HAbrach at TMRIUSA.COM>
> Cc: 	ewg at lists.openfabrics.org
> Date: 	12/14/2011 08:03 AM
> Subject: 	Re: [ewg] OpenSM 1.5.4 Boot Problem
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 12/13/2011 2:35 PM, Hector Abrach wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a boot problem with OpenSM
> 
> Are you saying the switch is booted rather than OpenSM ?
> 
> What is the OpenSM running on and in what environment ?
> 
>> the problem occurs seldomly and
>> started to ocur when we started using a new Mellanox MT1118X03342 switch.
>> The problem occurs during the discovery phase within
> state_mgr_sweep_hop_1.
>>
>> However, I discovered that the actual location is because the
>> qp0_mads_outsanding stalls at 1 occasionally.
> 
> Is it stuck or after timeout/retry does this get updated properly ?
> 
>> Within file osm_vl15intf.c in function vl15_poller it checks at the
>> rfifo and if the qlist still has items it applies function vl15_send_mad
>> which later on triggers the signal.
>> With the current default setting of 4 for OSM_DEFAULT_SMP_MAX_ON_WIRE I
>> noticed that cl_qlist_end reaches zero before
>> stats->qp0_mads_outstanding does. This causes a stall in
>> cl_event_wait_on. The rfifo always reaches 0 when there are 4
>> qp0_mads_outstanding however when it fails it always fails when there is
>> 1 qp0_mad_outstanding.
> 
> Is some (request) SMP that OpenSM sent timing out (not being responded to) ?
> 
>> Have you seen this failure? By the way, I see this failure once every 15
>> reboots approximately.
>>
>> I discovered that changing OSM_DEFAULT_SMP_MAX_ON_WIRE to 1 fixes the
>> problem.
> 
> What do you mean exactly by fixes the problem ? I'm not sure I
> understand what the problem is yet.
> 
> -- Hal
> 
>> My guess is that there is a race condition when the switch sends 4 SMPs
>> in parallel. Also, this failure only appears to occur at reboot. Another
>> solution which is not acceptable is when I add a delay in the process
>> the failure goes away. This as if the switch needed more time to do
>> something.
>>
>> I would really appreciate your help and insight.
>> Thank you
>>
>> Hector Abrach
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