[OpenAFS-devel] File size limit exceeded

Jeffrey Hutzelman jhutz@cmu.edu
Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:17:19 -0500


On Tuesday, February 10, 2004 12:01:37 -0500 Mitch Collinsworth 
<mitch@ccmr.cornell.edu> wrote:

> You will probably get various suggestions here.  One that would work
> is to shutdown the database servers on the XP system until you are
> able to upgrade it.  You're not actually gaining much by running the
> databases on both servers, since neither server will run without the
> other being up.  (1 vote out of 2 does not make a quorum.)  If you
> drop back to just 1 database server then at least that server can
> run in the absence of the other.  (1 vote out of 1 does make a quorum.)

Not true.
Whatever server has the lowest IP address listed in the CellServDB will get 
an extra half vote.  This means in a cell with an even number of database 
servers partitioned exactly in half (or with half down), the group 
containing the lowest host will be able to achieve quorum.

Also, the ptserver and vlserver have been able for quite a long time (at 
least since 3.3a, and I think rather longer than that) to serve read-only 
data in the absence of a quorum.

So, if your higher-numbered server goes down, you still get to do 
everything.  If the lower-numbered server goes down, you can't make 
changes, but you can still look up volume locations and protection 
information.

Also, in a two-server configuration, only the lower-numbered server needs 
to be upgraded in order to resolve the quorum problem.  If this is your 
Linux box, then you win -- upgrade it, and leave the XP box alone.  If the 
lower-numbered server is the XP box, then you will need to either shut down 
its database servers (and remove them from CellServDB), or obtain the 
binary fixes from IBM, if they are available.