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  1. ZABBIX BUGS AND ISSUES
  2. ZBX-19348

Don't use MNT_WAIT with getmntinfo(2)

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    • Icon: Problem report Problem report
    • Resolution: Fixed
    • Icon: Trivial Trivial
    • 5.4.1rc1, 6.0.0alpha1, 6.0 (plan)
    • 5.4.0rc1
    • Agent (G)
    • None
    • FreeBSD, and probably NetBSD, OpenBSD, and OSX too.
    • Sprint 76 (May 2021)
    • 0.5

      Steps to reproduce:

      1. Use VFS_FS_DISCOVERY on a host with many ZFS file systems and heavy control path activity (zfs snapshot, zfs destroy, zfs recv, etc)

      Result:

      VFS Discovery will be very slow.  It can easily exceed the maximum timeout period.  These leads to plentiful false alarms about "Zabbix agent down on host ..."
      Analysis:

      The VFS_FS_DISCOVERY function tries to discovery every mounted file system.  On the BSDs, it uses `getmntinfo`.  But it sets the mode argument to `MNT_WAIT`.  That means that the kernel effectively calls `statfs` on every single file system in order to ensure that fields like `f_bfree` are up to date.  Not only is that expensive in general, but on ZFS such calls can block for a long time if there are operations like a `zfs destroy` in process.

      In fact, Zabbix doesn't even use `f_bfree` or any of the other fields that require frequent updates.  The only fields that VFS_FS_DISCOVERY uses are `f_mntonname` and `f_fstypename`.  Those two will always be up-to-date even without `MNT_WAIT`, except temporarily while a file system is being unmounted.  So there's no reason to use `MNT_WAIT`.

      On Solaris, Zabbix simply reads `/etc/mnttab`, and on Linux it reads `/proc/mounts`.  Neither of those does anything like what `getmntinfo` does with `MNT_WAIT`.  In fact, they don't even report the used space of each file system.

      In conclusion, Zabbix should replace all uses of `MNT_WAIT` with `MNT_NOWAIT`.

            dgoloscapov Dmitrijs Goloscapovs
            asomers Alan Somers
            Team A
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              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved: