kernel: attempt to access beyond end of device

[npavlidis]

Hello,

The error I seem to be getting (not often but sometimes since the last reboot)
is :

Dec 3 19:49:33 domain.gr kernel: attempt to access beyond end of device
Dec 3 19:49:33 domain.gr kernel: md3: rw=0, want=12230682888, limit=306070144

md3 is the / partition on the system

From the Google search I did it not clear if it is a file system error or a drive error.

Note: before the last boot after the kernel installation grub was installed using this guide: http://radu.rendec.ines.ro/howto/raid1.html

Note2: The last reboot was on Dec 2 and the logs started at Dec 3

Thanks,

Any help is much appreciated

[scott]

Thats a file system error, generally its pretty bad to see that. You should probably fsck it asap, and keep some good backups.

[npavlidis]

Thanks
I will backup the system using tar and reboot to fsck

In future setups..

now the server has /boot / and /tmp

the ideal partition layout would be something like :

/boot 100MB
/tmp 1GB
/var rest of space
/ 10GB

in order to avoid reboots and make fsck more easy?

[scott]

My ideal layout is:

/boot <- first 1024 cylinders, 100-200mb is generally good
swap <- x2 the size of ram
/ <- everything else

You want swap closer to the front of the disk since it will be faster.

[breun]

I thought the 2xRAM rule for swap is a pretty outdated idea these days. Do you really setup a 4 GB swap partition on a server that has 2 GB RAM? And 8 GB swap on a 4 GB RAM machine? It seems that much swap would never be used and if it were used I believe you have other problems.

[scott]

You can go over 1x, when you're using ramdisks or shm. But thats not why I recommend it, since I suspect very few people here use either. I recommend it so you can use the swapspace to re-install the OS.