Hi all.
There is a backup job running on a ESX 3.0.1 which is using a Windows-share as its destination. The backup tool (vi3backup) uses the vcb command line tools to export VMs to disk in this case to a mounted Samba-Share. The Backuptool mounts and umounts this share automatically.
The Backup fails saying:
\[2007-02-18 06:05:04.448 'vcbMounter' 3076460672 error] Error: Failed to export the disk: Input/output error
\[2007-02-18 06:05:04.448 'vcbMounter' 3076460672 error] An error occured, cleaning up...
Here is what I get in /var/log/messages:
Feb 18 06:04:01 vrsesx02 kernel: SMB server not responding
Feb 18 06:04:01 vrsesx02 kernel: smb_get_length: recv error = 5
Feb 18 06:04:01 vrsesx02 kernel: smb_request: result -5, setting invalid
Feb 18 06:04:01 vrsesx02 kernel: smb_writepage_sync: failed write, wsize=4096, result=-5
Feb 18 06:04:01 vrsesx02 kernel: smb_retry: successful, new pid=16314, generation=8
Could this be a bug in the smbfs-module or is it probably a performance problem?
Regards
Kai Hildebrandt
Just to give some feedback:
After installing the CIFS modules provided by Espen Blikstad these problems have stopped. No more input/output errors when exporting VMDKs to the CIFS mounted share.
For information about the CIFS modules see this thread:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=641717
Many thanks to Espen Blikstad for creating this driver and sharing it with the community!
Regards,
Jan
Can you mount the smbfs share manually?
bk
Yes.
There are 5 running VMs to backup. Two of the backups failed because of the error described above.
Regards
Kaii
Hi.
I got a more detailed error description. This message appearing several times in the logfile:
\[2007-03-10 09:58:59.161 'BaseLibs' 3076460672 warning] DISKLIB-SPARSE: Failed to write out header: Input/output error (327689)
HTH
Kai
I've seen this problem running a similar backup script, when you have more than a few hosts exporting to the SMB share simultaneously you get SMB timeout errors. vmkfstools/vcbmounter (which is just a wrapper anyway) bombs out with an Input/Output error at a random point during the VMDK export.
The only fix I have found is to stagger the backups so that no more than two hosts are backing up VMs to a single SMB share at one time. With less hosts backing up simultaneously, I never see this SMB error, so I can only conclude it's a performance related problem that isn't being dealt with very well.
Just to give some feedback:
After installing the CIFS modules provided by Espen Blikstad these problems have stopped. No more input/output errors when exporting VMDKs to the CIFS mounted share.
For information about the CIFS modules see this thread:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=641717
Many thanks to Espen Blikstad for creating this driver and sharing it with the community!
Regards,
Jan
That's good to know, thanks for posting a follow up.