Race condition in VM startup code (AIX)?

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Race condition in VM startup code (AIX)?

Postby Hans-Martin » Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:45 am

Hello,
we've experiencing spurious busy-waiting deadlocks between multiple images that are started at the same time.
The platform is AIX, VAST VM version is 6.02, image version is 7.51. Sorry I don't have more detailed information as I'm mostly dealing with the client side of things here, not the AIX batch image.
We have not been able to reproduce the situation with a simple setup, but it seems to be related to either VM or early image startup code, as the blocking images don't seem to produce logging information that would normally be written to stdout.

Does this sound like a known problem? And is there a workaround/solution for it?

Cheers,
Hans-Martin
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Re: Race condition in VM startup code (AIX)?

Postby wembley » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:27 am

Hans-Martin -

I've not heard of this situation before. We have at least one customer running about 50 or so batch images on the a single AIX machine, so I think the problem is not common.

* How many images are being started (I assume all on one AIX machine)?

* How are they being started?

* How many of them deadlock?

* Do they stop at a particular point in their startup sequence?

* Is the situation that some images are just delayed in starting up or is it really a deadlock (some images never start)?

* How do you clear the situation?
John O'Keefe [|], Principal Smalltalk Architect, Instantiations Inc.
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