Hi Leo, On Thu, 17 Sep 2020 10:05:44 -0400 Leo Famulari wrote: > On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 09:36:49PM -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 04:52:45PM +0200, Danny Milosavljevic wrote: > > >> commit 692d0626557451c4b557397f20b7394b612d0289 > > >> Author: Christoph Hellwig > > >> Date: Tue Sep 1 11:59:41 2020 +0200 > > >> > > >> block: fix locking in bdev_del_partition > > > Next, it probably makes sense to test 5.8.9 with the above commit > > reverted. Would someone like to try it? If that works, we can avoid > > the bisection, resume kernel updates, and revert this change across all > > of our kernels until a better solution is found. > > Using linux-libre 5.8.9 with that commit reverted, `guix system vm` does > work again. Thanks for testing it! What the commit does is lock the drive whose partition table is being modified. That sounds like a good idea in general. But parted does not expect the error code ENOMEM and thus misjudges the situation. See also: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=88ce2a530cc9865a894454b2e40eba5957a60e1a for the fix that goes into Linux 5.9. We could also patch parted to also accept ENOMEM in addition to ENXIO if we wanted to. I wouldn't (it diverges from what upstream is doing--too much work).