Re: database corruption

On 2004-10-04 19:23+0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> first of all please keep me in cc: because I am not subscribed to this
> list. I hope to be given a neat and fast answer; if not I'll subscribe
> to continue the discussion.
>
> Apparently I have found a way to corrupt a repository in an
> unrecoverable way. Our website (http://initd.org/) runs apache 2,
> subversion 1.0.5 and provide two different accesses to the repository.
> The first is the usual subversion mod_dav_svn.
>
> The second is through svnlook: we have a small widget on out homepage
> that uses svnlook to provide some information on the last checkin.
> Apparently after some hours the "db/nodes" file is corrupted without any
> apparent reason. The contents of the file are quite strange too, here
> are the first few lines:
>
> svn: File not found: revision '531', path 'psycopg'
> <EE><91>^^^@I^C^@^@d^UaA^>^@^@^@^@^@^@^
>
> Note that "psycopg" is not a valid repository but *was* a CVS repository
> ported using "cvs2svn" and then "svnadmin load" (the new path is
> psycopg1, note the '1').
>
> Every time it happens I have to throw away the repository and recover
> from backup (happened 3 times in 2 days).
>
> Is this a know problem?
>

This definitely isn't a known problem, and therefore I can't give you
any precise advices, sorry about that. -- Frankly, I don't have any
idea what could cause that, so could you provide more information:

- Server OS,

- Spesific Apache version,

- Berkeley DB version,

- File system type where repository is installed (it isn't NFS, is it?)

- Will the repository be ok without your svnlook widged?

- Are you sure that mod_dav_svn and svnlook are using exactly same
  version of linked libraries?

- How do you know that db/nodes is corrupted? What was the exact error
  message which told that? Which program told that?

- What will svnadmin recover or 'db_recover -vech ' say about your
  repository? Read the book section
  http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook-1.0/ch05s03.html#svn-ch-5-sect-3.4
  before trying out (shutdown every other repository access methods!)
  or even better, try those actions on a copy of your repository.

- Have you tried to run recovery when your Apache has been up and running?

- Are you using some other hooks on your repository setup (perhaps
  dumping it with closed file descriptors (stdout & stderr))?

- Where did the Subversion came to your system (Prebuild, self-build)?

- Also which command printed the quoted error message?

- Anything else non-standard which deviates from common setup?

If this happens again, could you set aside your repository, just in
case that somebody likes to take look of it?

I strongly suspect that you have something fishy on your setup, this
really isn't a known problem.

Sorry that I could not help more.

BR, Jani

-- 
Jani Averbach
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