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    Alert: Control Domain Memory Usage

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Solved Compute
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    • olivierlambertO Offline
      olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
      last edited by

      I don't think there's enough time to really be sure about the memory leak. It's normal to see raising RAM usage, what's not is to consume all the dom0. Can you wait a bit longer between 2 tests?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • O Offline
        OlivierD
        last edited by

        Hello,
        I can confirm we encountered this issue on several hosts in the past few months.

        Config :

        • Server is Dell PowerEdge M630
        • local storage on SSD + remote SR on ISCSI
        • kernel used: kernel-4.19.19-6.0.11.1.xcpng8.1.x86_64
        • we use ixgbe (intel-ixgbe-5.5.2-2.xcpng8.1.x86_64) and network cards are Intel 82599 10 Gigabit dual Port (with bonding on XCP NG).
        • firmwares up to date (less than 6 months, when we updated to XCP-NG 8.1+).

        Additional informations :

        • we don't have any VM with memory ballooning
        • shutting down VMs does not free memory
        • we don't do many operations each day (less than 5 reboots/stop/start).
        • size of pools does not matter (bug happened with two hosts and on another pool with 10 hosts).

        According to some messages, it seems kernel-alt fixes the issue ... We'll try to switch kernel when we encounter the issue again.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • olivierlambertO Offline
          olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
          last edited by olivierlambert

          Yes, please, keep us posted 🙂

          Thank for your feedback!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • F Offline
            fasterfourier
            last edited by

            One more observation here. This issue does not occur on a different pool of ours that's also running CH8.2LTSR. That pool has lower loading overall, 2 hosts instead of 7, and does not contain any NICs using the ixgbe driver. Other aspects of the pool are identical.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • stormiS Offline
              stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @stormi
              last edited by

              @stormi said in Alert: Control Domain Memory Usage:

              Before I realized that not every affected host was using the ixgbe driver, contrarily to what I initially thought, I built an alternate driver from the latest sources from Intel.

              So, even if there's little hope that it will fix anything, here's how to install it (on XCP-ng 8.1 or 8.2):

              yum install intel-ixgbe-alt --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
              reboot
              

              Has anyone tested the updated ixgbe driver?

              daveD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • daveD Offline
                dave @stormi
                last edited by

                @stormi

                I upgraded a pool which was affected from 8.1 to 8.2 this weekend and installed the driver on one of the Hosts. Its a little early, but as you can see, there seems to be a difference in the memory usage:

                Stock Driver

                c53f2add-8bbe-4203-bba8-97e94b466c56-image.png

                Stromis Driver:

                57bf6a63-eff5-47ca-a155-b918c12b95b2-image.png

                One can allready see a constanty, slowly growing mem-usage in "small steps" on the Server with the stock driver, wheras the server with stormis driver seems to be stable.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • olivierlambertO Offline
                  olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                  last edited by

                  Indeed, sounds better in any case! Thanks a lot @dave for the feedback.

                  For everyone else with the issue: please try the same and report. Maybe we found the culprit!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • olivierlambertO Offline
                    olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                    last edited by

                    That's really likely the problem all along.

                    See https://sourceforge.net/p/e1000/bugs/633/#af80/154d

                    So our alt driver is indeed fixing it 🙂

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • M Offline
                      MrMike
                      last edited by

                      Good job guys!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • olivierlambertO Offline
                        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                        last edited by

                        A big thanks for the link that @andyhhp provided to confirm the problem 🙂

                        delafD D 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • delafD Offline
                          delaf @olivierlambert
                          last edited by

                          I have installed intel-ixgbe-alt-5.9.4-1.xcpng8.1.x86_64 on my server (268).
                          I'll check in some days if I still have the problem or not.

                          Thank you guys!

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • D Offline
                            daKju @olivierlambert
                            last edited by

                            @olivierlambert is there a plan to deploy the alt-driver over the xcp-ng update or should we installed by the xcp-ng-testing repo?
                            THX for the good job guys 👍 😊

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • stormiS Offline
                              stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team
                              last edited by

                              I'm going to build a driver package that only has the patch that is thought to fix the memory issue and let everyone here test it. If the results are good, then it will become an official update.

                              delafD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • delafD Offline
                                delaf @stormi
                                last edited by delaf

                                @stormi
                                Screenshot 2021-03-04 at 21.21.16.png
                                The 2 servers have been reinstalled with an up to date 8.2. They host each 2 VMs that are doing the same thing (~100Mb/s of netdata stream).

                                The right one has the 5.9.4-1.xcpng8.2, the left one has 5.5.2-2.xcpng8.2.

                                The patch seem to be OK for me.

                                J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • stormiS Offline
                                  stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team
                                  last edited by

                                  Announcement

                                  Here's an updated ixgbe driver package that is meant as an update candidate without updating to a higher version. If need all feedback we can get on this one, because this is the candidate for the official fix as would be delivered to everyone. Of course the intel-igb-alt will remain available for those who need a more recent driver, and I even moved it to the updates repository so that one doesn't need to add --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing to install it anymore.

                                  To test the official update candidate on XCP-ng 8.1 or 8.2.

                                  • If you had previously installed intel-ixgbe-alt:
                                    • yum remove intel-ixgbe-alt -y
                                    • Check that the /lib/modules/4.19.0+1/override/ixgbe.ko file was properly deleted. I've seen, once, a situation where a .ko file from an -alt package wasn't deleted, so I'm being cautious here and ask you to report you see that it is still present. In theory, this is impossible, but as I've seen it once I don't know anymore 🙂
                                    • Run depmod -a
                                  • Update the intel-ixgbe package from the testing repo: yum update intel-ixgbe --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
                                  • Reboot

                                  Note: I'm not 100% sure that I picked the right patch, nor that this patch alone is sufficient.

                                  delafD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • delafD Offline
                                    delaf @stormi
                                    last edited by

                                    @stormi I have installed intel-ixgbe 5.5.2-2.1.xcpng8.2 on my server s0267. Let's wait a some days to check if the memleak is solved by this patch.

                                    delafD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • delafD Offline
                                      delaf @delaf
                                      last edited by

                                      @stormi
                                      It seems to be good here!

                                      Screenshot 2021-03-09 at 08.36.50.png

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                      • olivierlambertO Offline
                                        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                        last edited by

                                        So we found the good patch 🙂 That was a really tricky issue to find!

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • stormiS Offline
                                          stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team
                                          last edited by stormi

                                          Once again, an issue that was present in vendor drivers but not in the mainline kernel. It's becoming harder and harder to trust vendor drivers. But that's what they require for support...

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                          • F Offline
                                            fasterfourier
                                            last edited by olivierlambert

                                            Our Citrix ticket has been worked and they concluded that the NIC driver is to blame here as well. They had us collect debug info using:

                                            /opt/xensource/libexec/xen-cmdline --set-dom0 page_owner=on
                                            

                                            They then confirmed the memory leak was from the NIC driver. They are intending to release a public hotfix for this issue.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
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