In Linux environments, GPFS may incorrectly fail writev() with EINVAL resulting in the user application failing during write

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User affected: Only customers running the affected level on Linux and have applications which use the writev() system call for writes to a GPFS file.

Note: The writev() call is most likely to have been automatically generated by the library or compiler. For example, using C++ stream class to write more than 1023 byte to a file will generate a writev() call that could fail with an EINVAL error.

The following sample program shows an example for which a write using stream class may fail unexpectedly:

#include<cassert>
#include<cstdio>
#include<fstream>

int main (int argc, char** argv) {
assert(argc == 2);

char* data = new char[1000000];
std::ofstream f(argv[1], std::ios_base::binary);
f.write(data, 1023); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.write(data, 1024); // this would fail
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.write(data, 1025); // this would fail
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.write(data, 1023); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.write(data, 1024); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.write(data, 1024); // this would fail
perror("write call");
f.write(data, 1023); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.write(data, 512); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.write(data, 512); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.write(data, 1024); // this would succeed
perror("write call");
f.flush();

f.close();
delete[] data;
return 0;
}

Recommendation: Affected V3.5 customer should contact IBM Service for an efix containing APAR IV64863; IBM plans to make this fix available in GPFS 3.5.0.21(APAR IV64863). V4.1 customers should upgrade to GPFS 4.1.0.3 (APAR IV64862) at Fix Central http://www.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/ .