State of GFS, OCFS2, Clustering, iSCSI, etc. in Fedora (recap a few bits)

[Dennis J.]

On 01/14/2009 01:01 PM, Fabio M. Di Nitto wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> sorry if i can't reply to each email properly as I don't have a local
> history of the mailing list.
>
> To reply to
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/fedora-server-list/2009-January/000059.html
>
>> My concern right now isn't so much about the configuration of these
>> technologies but with the fact that they don't seem to be maintained at all
>> right now and in various states of disarray.
>
> Can you please be more specific? I have been updating redhat-cluster on a regular base in Fedora 9/10/rawhide.
> What makes you think they are unmaintained?
>

mounting ocfs2 partition fails due to missing load_module command in 
startup script:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=476469
(A added the needed fix and the keyword "EasyFix" to the bug)

Missing dependency: rgmanager
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=477496

system-config-cluster is looking for cman_tool in the wrong place
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=477499

The reason I was bringing this up on the mailing-list is that bugs like the 
ocfs2 issue and the problem with the cman_tool location are highly visible 
so I was wondering why such bugs didn't seem to pop up on anyones radar.

After having the problems with system-config-cluster I tried Conga as the 
alternative route for configuration but "luci" seems to have gone AWOL. 
According to http://sourceware.org/cluster/conga/ Conga wasn't part of F7 
and F8 because of python compat. issues. Is this the reason that luci isn't 
part of F10?

>>> That's how I ran into the problems I mentioned. In the near future I will
>>> have to setup approx. 30TB of storage that needs to be available for 5-10
>>> servers. The problem is that OCFS2 seems to be just plain broken,
>
> Did you report those issues to upstream? We work with OCFS2 guys all the
> time and they are very responsive.

The question for me is if the problem is fixed upstream how long does it 
take for them to get into fedora? The fix for the ocfs2 problem was posted 
in Ubuntus launchpad in October and given the fact that this bug prevents 
ocfs2 from working completely I'm wondering why it's still present in 
Fedora. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that virtually nobody 
uses ocfs2 in fedora which is why it didn't get reported until now.
That's not necessarily a big problem per se but if this technology is 
considered low priority in Fedora then that factors into my decision to 
rely on it.

>>   the web
>>> configuration tool described in the RHEL 5 manual for GFS is no longer
>>> present in Fedora
>
> conga is part of Fedora 9/10/rawhide. Look for ricci, modcluster,
> cluster-snmp and cluster-cim packages.

What about luci?

>>   and the cluster configuration tool doesn't work because
>>> it tries to call command line tools in the wrong locations.
>
> system-config-cluster has been obsoleted. Unless you mean some other
> tools, in that case please specify which.
>
>>> What I'm wondering is that if fedora is the basis for RHEL then what are
>>> the plans for RHEL 6 regarding these technologies. AFAIK fedora 11 will
>>> form the basis for that but right now GFS and/or clustering in general
>>> seems to suffer from bit-rot.
>
> The plans for F11 are very well set for upstream and been communicated
> across the board through public mailing lists.
>
> Anyway, so far I have read a lot of "bit-rot" this or "broken" that, but
> you didn't provide any real info on the problems.
> I'd be very happy to coordinate the fixes upstream and propagate them
> into Fedora ASAP given enough info.

I think the basic problem is that I'm trying to feel my way into the 
clustering field but run into a lot of conflicting information. For example 
I am supposed to look upstream for info (which I generally agree with) but 
when I look at the Conga homepage the user manual tells me to install 
"luci". Apparently that information is outdated. Since I have to start 
somewhere I chose the latest "Red Hat Cluster Suite for Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux" which talks about system-config-cluster which as I learned above is 
basically no longer relevant.

Is there some kind of "clustering lab" site out there that contains more 
recent information about these technologies?

>>> I'm just surprised that GFS is a cornerstone of RHEL 5 but now seems to be
>>> basically unmaintained or is the RHEL team maintaining forked versions of
>>> these tools?
>
> RHEL doesn't have any forked tool. You can check upstream wiki and git
> repositories yourself. All our development is done in the open.

That's what I thought and that's why I was so confused when running into 
these problems. The trouble I ran into didn't seem to make sense given the 
success Red Hat is having with this stuff in the field so I decided to take 
this to the brand new fedora-server list so I could perhaps get some more 
insight into what's going on with this stuff.

Regards,
   Dennis