[Dovecot] Strange dmesg messages

[Uldis Pakuls]

Raphael Bittencourt S. Costa wrote:
> The problem still remains after I removed hdlm driver.
>
> I've tested on Suse10 with kernel 2.6.16.21-0.8-smp x86_64 and
> 2.6.16.27-0.9-smp x86_64, with and without hdlm driver.  What kernel
> version do you use on your suse servers? 
>   
2.6.16.13-0.4 (ppc)
2.6.16.21-0.8 (x86_64)
2.6.16.27-0.4-smp (x86)
2.6.16.27-0.8-smp (x86_64)
2.6.16.53-0.16-smp (x86)
2.6.18.8-0.7-bigsmp (x86)
2.6.21-0.9-smp (x86)
2.6.22.17-0.1-default (x86-64)

All SuSE - SLES9; SLES10 or OpenSUSE 10.x

My hardware mostly is IBM i-series and x-series servers (x86). and IBM 
RS6000 PPC box. Some them come with preinstalled SuSE linux, some are my 
own setup. In fact I have tested  all  dovecot  versions since v 0.9.x 
and never have any problems related to inotify kernel API.

About inotify.:
Inotify kernel api is included in "vanilla" kernel since 2.6.17-rc1-mm1 
; before this there were only patches (one of them SuSE patch).

since 2.6.19 it is intended to replace older dnotify api.
2.6.18 include a lots of patches/bugfixes against 2.6.17 code.

Linux kernel developers recommends use of dnotify if kernel is older than 2.16.17 
As your case shows - there is problems with patched 2.16.16 code... try use recommended dnotify.

btw: only now I noticed; may SLES9 and SuSE 9.3 uses dnotify...:)   

> What is the impact on performance if I compile using --with-notify=none?
> If I couldn't solve this, I'll problably try Debian.
>   
donotify is more resource expensive - inotify allows monitoring of both 
files and directories via a single open fd.
so before you try  --with-notify=none, try --with-notify=dnotify

Uldis