VMware notes
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Jump to navigationJump to searchEXT3-fs error: ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
If you see this in your /var/log/messages on a machine running vmware:
Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: kswapd0: page allocation failure. order:0, mode:0x850 Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: Call Trace:<ffffffff801ea51a>{vgacon_cursor+0} <ffffffff80157b6e>{__alloc_pages+768} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8016c8fd>{alloc_page_interleave+61} <ffffffff80157c02>{__get_free_pages+11} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8015aa8c>{kmem_getpages+36} <ffffffff8015b227>{cache_alloc_refill+615} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8015aeef>{__kmalloc+123} <ffffffffa006ea38>{:jbd:__jbd_kmalloc+21} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffffa006a7b0>{:jbd:journal_get_undo_access+96} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffffa007baa9>{:ext3:ext3_try_to_allocate_with_rsv+84} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffffa007c1df>{:ext3:ext3_new_block+680} <ffffffffa007e396>{:ext3:ext3_alloc_block+7} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffffa007ff6a>{:ext3:ext3_get_block_handle+863} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff801752f3>{__block_write_full_page+198} <ffffffffa00803bf>{:ext3:ext3_get_block+0} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffffa007eb26>{:ext3:ext3_ordered_writepage+245} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8015eada>{shrink_zone+3102} <ffffffff80157233>{__free_pages_ok+240} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8019c58e>{mb_cache_shrink_fn+94} <ffffffff801dcdf4>{__up_read+15} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff8015f3b2>{balance_pgdat+506} <ffffffff8015f5fc>{kswapd+252} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff80132ff0>{autoremove_wake_function+0} <ffffffff80130541>{finish_task_switch+55} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff80132ff0>{autoremove_wake_function+0} <ffffffff80130590>{schedule_tail+11} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff80110c23>{child_rip+8} <ffffffff8015f500>{kswapd+0} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: <ffffffff80110c1b>{child_rip+0} Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: journal_get_undo_access: No memory for committed data Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: ext3_try_to_allocate_with_rsv: aborting transaction: Out of memory in __ext3_journal_get_undo_access Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sdd1) in ext3_new_block: Out of memory Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: Aborting journal on device sdd1. Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: ext3_abort called. Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sdd1): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: Remounting filesystem read-only Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sdd1) in ext3_ordered_writepage: Out of memory Feb 7 09:42:14 roothack kernel: __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_committed_data Feb 7 09:42:16 roothack kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sdd1) in start_transaction: Journal has aborted
This could be a vmware configuration issue. It may appear unrelated, but it seems that vmware can suck up all memory and starve EXT3 of enough memory to write the journal and memory can't be swapped to disk because that would cause more disk IO... Or something like that. That doesn't seek quite right because SWAP partitions are different partitions and are not journaled.
Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add this line
vm.min_free_kbytes = 10240
Alternatively you can add this to /etc/rc.local or somewhere else in the boot process.
The value 10240 could be 5120 or higher.
For more information see the VMware forum.