[Dovecot] Corrupted index cache file and high CPU usage

[Stan Hoeppner]

On 12/22/2011 8:08 AM, hydra wrote:
> Hello Timo, thank you for the reply. I was suspecting the same. However:
> - the machine runs under Vmware,
> - I've tried 3 different kernel versions,
> - I've tried 3 different SCSI controllers.
> 
> All same results.

dmesg output?  Log errors?

Is your EXT4 filesystem on a VMFS volume or an RDM (SAN LUN)?


> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> 
>> On 21.12.2011, at 18.38, hydra wrote:

>> That's a kernel process..
>>
>>> I suspect, that this is something to do with Dovecot, because after
>>> deleting the dovecot.index.cache file, everything went back to normal.
>> When
>>> this happens, I cannot unmount the drive nor a system reboot works.

System (host machine) reboot, or virtual machine reboot doesn't fix the
problem?  FYI, Linux doesn't unmount drives, it unmounts filesystems.

I'd say you may have a problem with your VMFS volume or RDM, or maybe
just your EXT4 filesystem.  Have you run an fsck on it?  What result?

Or, as Timo suggests, could be a kernel bug.  Or an interaction of these
low level layers causing a problem.  If you can't unmount a filesystem,
that has nothing to do with Dovecot, and points to a much larger, more
critical, problem.

Do you have this problem when booting an older kernel?  Say 2.6.32?  2.6.37?

>> That's a kernel bug..
>>
>> I think you're thinking it the wrong way: Dovecot isn't causing your
>> system to break. Your system is causing Dovecot to break. Faulty hardware
>> or faulty kernel.

-- 
Stan