Re: EPICS CAS errors

[Ralph Lange <ralph.lange@gmx.de>]

Hi Oleg,

Remote diagnosis of an unknown system is always more of a guessing game than anything else.

So, first and most important suggestion: refer to a local expert.

Nevertheless, some thoughts:

Statistically, many if not most weird errors on the IOC are caused by memory corruption.

In your case, the thread suspensions happen when the CA server on the IOC calls db_event_enable (line 477) or db_event_disable (line 493), and trying to acquire the monitor lock fails with an error.

The routines db_event_enable / db_event_disable are called from within the CA server when access rights change for a record or when a client sets up / cancels a monitor.

Were there access rights changes happening on the IOC at 07-Apr 19:59:10 and 08-Apr 08:11:10 (at the "line 493" events)?

Some "line 477" thread suspensions happen with intervals of a few minutes. That could match a client repeatedly getting ungracefully disconnected (because of the server-side thread being suspended) and then reconnecting, provoking another attempt to lock an invalid monitor lock and get disconnected again.

The semaphore locking code is used everywhere, all the time, all over EPICS Base. Not an obvious candidate for a bug.

So ... I think what you see may be consistent with a memory corruption that affects at least one record (i.e. the pointer to its monitor lock semaphore) or the memory area where the semaphore structures have been allocated.

Too bad that the error messages don't show the record involved. That would give valuable information.

Memory corruption issues (if there is one) are not easy to track down; strategies and tools depend on the operating system. Which closes the loop to my first and most important suggestion: refer to a local expert.

Cheers,
~Ralph

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 10:40 PM, Oleg A. Makarov <makarov@anl.gov> wrote:

Ralph,

could you please provide some suggestions how to diagnose what causing suspension of CAS-client threads ?

Thank you,
Oleg