Subject: Followup to #5073
To: None <netbsd-bugs@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Dominic J Hulewicz <dom@inta.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/29/1998 09:35:23
I reported a problem (#5073) back in February about a NetBSD 1.3 i386
host that regularly panics with "vrele: ref cnt". After swapping out
all the hardware and completely reinstalling with 1.3.2, the problem
still occurred so I knew that it must be something I was running.

I eventually traced it to an accidental duplication of rsync processes.
I have two scripts on another machine sending data via rsync+ssh to the
NetBSD host, one sends at two minute intervals, the other every five
minutes. At some point the two separate copy commands had been merged
into a single script, but the cron entry for the second script had not
been removed. This meant that every ten minutes, two rsync processes
would collide and try to mirror the same directory to the same machine.

I guess the (bad) luck of the machine panicing is down to some sort of
race condition / timing issue that occurs. I would imagine the problem
could be easily replicated by setting up two or more timed rsync
sessions set to go off at the same time.


	Regards,
		Dom.
-- 
  Dominic J. Hulewicz - mailto:dom@inta.net - http://www.intanet.com/dom