[OpenAFS] 1.4.x quorum election process?

[Ken Hornstein]

>The "lowest IP address" favoritism decision is totally arbitrary, no?

Absolutely, yes.  I think ... looking at the source code, the comparison
is done in 3 places in vote.c.  You could replace that with anything else.
I've always thought that an explicit ordering would make more sense, but
I never cared enough to actually write the code.

>We're kind of screwed unless there's a way around it,
>and really would not like to have to apply a local patch
>with every rollout.

Have you considered making the "lowest" server a clone?  Clones are
like other database servers, except that they can never be elected as a
sync site.  The (default) election winner then would be the next closest.

Also, it's not commonly understood but Ubik voting is what I like to
call "Chicago style"; the incumbent is always the winner of the election
even if he's not the best candidate.  Thus if you shut off the database
servers of the lowest IP address, once a new election takes place the
winner will be sync-site-for-life (unless he's out of service past the
Ubik change voting interval).

Just trying to present possible solutions that don't involve code changes.

--Ken