<font size=2 face="sans-serif">Orlando, </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">give that there are so many emails/interest
on this topic in recent month, let me share some personal expertise on
this :-)</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">any stock Samba or CTDB version you
will find any distro is not sufficient and it doesn't matter which you
choose (SLES, RHEL or any form of debian and any version of all of them).
</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">the reason is that Samba doesn't have
the GPFS header and library files included in its source, and at compile
time it dynamically enables/disables all GPFS related things based on the
availability of the GPFS packages . as non of the distros build machines
have GPFS installed all this packages end up with binaries in their
rpms which don't have the required code enabled to properly support GPFS
and non of the vfs modules get build either. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">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. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Only if the build happens on such a
node things like the vfs modules for GPFS are build and included in the
package. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">also some people in the past have used
a single instance of Samba to export shares over CIFS as they believe its
a safe alternative to a more complex CTDB setup. also here a word of caution,
even if you have a single instance of Samba running on top of GPFS you
are exposed to potential data corruption if you don't use the proper Samba
version (explained above) and the proper configuration, you can skip CTDB
For that, but you still require a proper compiled version of Samba with
GPFS code installed on the build machine. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">to be very clear the problem is not
GPFS, its that Samba does locking AND caching on top of the Filesystem
without GPFS knowledge if you don't use the right code/config to 'tell'
GPFS about it, so GPFS can not ensure data consistency, not even on the
same physical node for data thats shared over CIFS. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">there are unfortunate no shortcuts.
</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">i also have to point out that if you
recompile the packages and configure everything correctly this is most
likely to work, but you won't get official support for the CIFS part of
this setup from IBM.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">This email is not an official Statement/Response
of IBM, see it as personal 'AS-IS' Information sharing.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Sven</font>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><font size=1 color=#5f5f5f face="sans-serif">From:
</font><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Orlando Richards <orlando.richards@ed.ac.uk></font>
<br><font size=1 color=#5f5f5f face="sans-serif">To:
</font><font size=1 face="sans-serif">gpfsug-discuss@gpfsug.org</font>
<br><font size=1 color=#5f5f5f face="sans-serif">Date:
</font><font size=1 face="sans-serif">12/13/2013 07:35 AM</font>
<br><font size=1 color=#5f5f5f face="sans-serif">Subject:
</font><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Re: [gpfsug-discuss]
GPFS and both Samba and NFS</font>
<br><font size=1 color=#5f5f5f face="sans-serif">Sent by:
</font><font size=1 face="sans-serif">gpfsug-discuss-bounces@gpfsug.org</font>
<br>
<hr noshade>
<br>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>On 13/12/13 15:31, Jonathan Buzzard wrote:<br>
> On Fri, 2013-12-13 at 15:15 +0000, Orlando Richards wrote:<br>
><br>
> [SNIP]<br>
><br>
>> Hi Lindsay,<br>
>><br>
>> We rebuild ctdb from the (git) source (in the 1.2.40 branch currently),<br>
>> after running into performance problems with the sernet bundled
version<br>
>> (1.0.114). It's easy to build:<br>
><br>
> Interestingly the RHEL7 beta is shipping ctdb 2.1 in combination with<br>
> Samba 4.1<br>
><br>
> </font></tt><a href=http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/7/x86_64/os/Packages/><tt><font size=2>http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/7/x86_64/os/Packages/</font></tt></a><tt><font size=2><br>
><br>
> JAB.<br>
><br>
The samba team are currently working to bring ctdb into the main samba
<br>
source tree - so hopefully this will become a moot point soon!<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
--<br>
Dr Orlando Richards<br>
Information Services<br>
IT Infrastructure Division<br>
Unix Section<br>
Tel: 0131 650 4994<br>
skype: orlando.richards<br>
<br>
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in <br>
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.<br>
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