[OpenAFS] Re: volserver crashing

[Andrew Deason]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:42:12 -0400
Derrick Brashear <shadow@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Dumb question:  Would I have to restart bosserver?  Can I do so
> > without being disruptive (i.e. restarting the fileserver process) to
> > my users?
> 
> the problem is, the ulimit applies to "me and my future children" so
> you'd need to effectively cause the current running bosserver to ask
> to modify its ulimit for future fileservers, or ask the current
> fileserver to do so for itself. so, not short of binary patching at
> runtime.

But it's the volserver we want to change the limits for. Normally, yes,
you'd stop bosserver completely and start it up again.

But technically, you could run a different volserver with a different
ulimit outside of bosserver. If you _really_ want to avoid restarting
the fileserver, you can:

$ cd /usr/afs/bin
$ mv volserver volserver.real
$ cat <<EOF > volserver
> #/bin/sh
> sleep 1000000
> exit 0
> EOF
$ chmod a+x volserver
$ kill -TERM <volserver pid>

Which will kill the existing volserver, and bosserver will restart it by
running that no-op shell script. So you are free to run your own
volserver in whatever environment. Something like:

$ ulimit -c unlimited
$ ./volserver.real -nojumbo

And make sure you

$ mv volserver.real volserver

after starting the volserver, so bosserver can start the real volserver
"normally" again. After you get a core, just kill the fake volserver
process, and bosserver will restart the real volserver.

This is all unsupported stuff, and I should tell you to not do this in
production, etc etc. But if you wanted to know how to do this without
interrupting the fileserver, there you go. If you're not sure of what
you're doing, you're probably better of just restarting bosserver
entirely (after setting ulimit), which does involve stopping and
starting the fileserver.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net