panic in ffs (Re: hangs in nbufkv)

Matthew Dillon wrote:

>:One of our file systems here does, indeed, use large block size (64K, I 
>:think, not sure, how to verify it) -- it is used for storing large 
>:database dumps. Are the bugs, Bruce and Matt are talking about, supposed 
>:to be gone by now (in which case, I can provide more debugging info), or 
>:does this remain a "known problem" and I should simply adopt the 
>:workaround suggested by Bruce in the first link above -- increase 
>:BKVASIZE? Should I also merge the patch posted by Bruce in the last of 
>:the links above, or are there good reasons, it is not in the official tree?
>  
>
[...]

>    But to be absolutely safe, I would follow Bruce's original suggestion
>    and increase BKVASIZE to 64K, for your particular system.
>  
>
After doing this and testing our backup script, the machine panicked two 
hours later (about half-way through the backup) with 
"initiate_write_inodeblock_ufs2: already started" (in 
ufs/ffs/ffs_softdep.c)... I guess, block sizes above 16Kb are just buggy 
and newfs(8) should be honest about it...

    -mi