[gpfsug-discuss] GPFS and both Samba and NFS

Jonathan Buzzard jonathan at buzzard.me.uk
Mon Dec 16 11:21:29 GMT 2013


On Fri, 2013-12-13 at 10:14 -0800, Sven Oehme wrote:

[SNIP]

> the only way to get something working (don't get confused with
> officially Supported) is to recompile the CTDB src packages AND the
> Samba src packages on a node that has GPFS already installed. also the
> inclusion of CTDB into Samba will not address this, its just a more
> convenient packaging. 
> 
> Only if the build happens on such a node things like the vfs modules
> for GPFS are build and included in the package. 
> 

That is a factually inaccurate statement. There is nothing in CTDB that
is GPFS specific. Trust me I have examined the code closely to determine
if this is the case. So unless this has changed recently you are flat
out wrong.

Consequently there is no requirement whatsoever to rebuild CTDB to get
the vfs_gpfs module. In addition there is also no requirement to
actually have GPFS installed to build the vfs_gpfs module either. What
you need to have is the GPFS GPL header files and nothing else. As it is
a loadable VFS module linking takes place at load time not compile time.

It is unworthy of an IBM employee to spread such inaccurate
misinformation.

[SNIP]

> said all this the binaries alone are only part of the Solution, after
> you have the correct packages, you need to properly configuration the
> system and setting all the right options (on GPFS as well as on CTDB
> and smbd.conf), which unfortunate are very System configuration
> specific, as otherwise you still can end up with data corruption if
> not set right. 

Indeed. However I know not only what those options are, but also what
they do despite IBM's refusal to tell us anything about them.

I would also point out that there are sites that where running Samba on
top of GPFS for many years before IBM began offering their
SONAS/Storwize Unifed products.


JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Fife, United Kingdom.




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