rsync 2.5.6, No buffer space available error...

[Kate Ward]

> On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 03:49:12PM -0400, Matt Miller wrote:
>> I have seen this error in many postings, but the solutions seem not to 
>> apply in this case.  This error happens during a small file transfer 
>> (gif image) and after 75% of a 165G rsync job (the building file list 
>> portion is complete.)  Most solutions I saw were related to not having 
>> enough RAM or running out of disk space.  Check out the machine specs 
>> below the error.
>> 
>> rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4830 bytes: phase "unknown": 
>> No buffer space available
>> rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(515)
>> rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 69 bytes: phase "unknown": 
>> Broken pipe
>> rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(515)
>> 
>> uptime reports---- 11:17pm  up  8:43,  2 users,  load average: 1.65, 
>> 1.40, 1.33
>> 
>> IBM x330 server
>> 2x1.4GHz PIII
>> 4G RAM
>> RedHat 7.2 (2.4.7-10smp -- required for veritas)
>> rsync 2.5.6
>> local vxfs source and destination (different filesystems) and 
>> destination has 800G of free space
>> (ideally the source will be on another machine, but I made it local to 
>> simplify troubleshooting... same problem with an NFS source)
>> 
>> 
>> rsync command used: 
>>    rsync -Wav --stats /sourcedir /destdir >> /opt/rsync.log 2>&1
>> 
>> and syslog reports:
>>    Aug 31 04:07:57 moss kernel: ENOMEM in do_get_write_access, retrying.
>>    Aug 31 04:16:05 moss kernel: journal_write_metadata_buffer: ENOMEM 
>> at get_unused_buffer_head, trying again.
>> 
>> anyone seen this?
> 
> Not an rsync problem.  This is a kernel issue.
> 
> You seem to be out of ZONE_DMA memory.  I don't know whether
> you should be reporting this to RH or Veritas or IBM but
> when you do be sure to send them /proc/slabinfo from the
> moment of error.
> 
> One thing you might try is booting with mem=900M  Running
> with more than 900M < n < 1G memory on 2.4 kernels is
> problematic.
> 
> 

I am experiencing this same problem with rsync 2.5.6 and 2.5.7.  The 
difference for me is I am running Solaris 8, not Linux.  I am using the 
same procedure to rsync ten different servers to a shared NFS storage, 
but one of those ten servers comes up with the following error (very 
similar to above).

rsync error: timeout in data send/receive (code 30) at io.c(103)
rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 69 bytes: phase "unknown": 
Broken pipe
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(515)

Just wanted to mention it was not Linux specific.

- kate