[ic] usertrack file reached 2GB limit, caused IC to only return partial pages

[Cameron G]

> Hello,
> 
> Tonight FrozenCPU.com was acting very strange, only returning partial IC
> pages.  It was consistent in that the page would stop at the same point
> every time.  I setup a test page like this:
> 
> START
> 
> [perl]
> my $out='';
> my $test=0;
> while ($test < 40000) {
> 
> $out .= "$test<BR>";
> $test += 1;
> }
> 
> return $out;
> [/perl]
> 
> FINISH
> 
> And the page would stop at the same point every time.  After doing some
> testing on the dev site, making backups of the live site and testing
> again I narrowed it down to a problem with the file structure of the
> live site.  I determined it was not the db by using a dev site to
> connect to the live db.
> 
> Going directory by directory I quickly noticed that the file usertrack
> had reached the 2GB limit of ext3.  I'm not sure why reaching this limit
> was causing IC to only return partial pages, but after tarring up the
> file and creating a new usertrack file the site returned to normal.  I
> also had plenty of disk space so that was not the issue.  I looked
> through the apache, ic, and system logs and the only strange entry was
> this in the IC server log:
> 
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:56:46 -0700] - - page server pid 2237 won't
> die!
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:56:56 -0700] - - page server pid 2227 won't
> die!
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:57:02 -0700] - - page server pid 2233 won't
> die!
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:57:10 -0700] - - page server pid 2231 won't
> die!
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:57:16 -0700] - - page server pid 2219 won't
> die!
> - - - [26/August/2003:21:57:36 -0700] - - page server pid 2217 won't
> die!
> 
> These entries repeated for pretty much every access of the site.
> 
> Anyway I thought if someone else runs into this issue it may save them a
> couple hours of investigation.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Ron
> 

perhaps it's time for a 2.4 kernel... ;)