[Linux-HA] NFS serving on Ubuntu and 2.6

[Héctor Cordobés]

Nelson Castillo wrote:
>>I think that sharing /var/lib/nfs is no good for me. In fact
>>there is no directory or file on the whole /var directory
>>with "nfs" on it!
> 
> 
> Weird. You don't describe what kind of HA
> solution you're setting up.

You are right. I am setting up an Active/Backup scheme, on a double SCSI 
controller for the same disk RAID... Actually, right now I am on some 
trials on two different hard disks, one per computer.

> 
> Does it work at all?
> 
Any other resource (apache, postgresql, and different IPs) works just 
fine on failover.


> I've only set up 1 HA-NFS server using DRBD and I
> got the stale filehandle issue on failover. It would last
> a few seconds.
> 

I am afraid this does not improve with time.

> 
>>Most examples I have seen use nfs-kernel-server. What a difference does
>>it make?
> 
> 
> I also used nfs-kernel-server.
> 
> I would get the stale filehandle on failover until I
> patched the nfs-kernel-server init script.
> 
> --- /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server       2003-08-03 20:38:55.000000000 -0500
> +++ nfs-kernel-server   2005-05-10 20:16:19.437175064 -0500
> @@ -80,6 +80,17 @@
> 
>        printf "Unexporting directories for $DESC..."
>        $PREFIX/sbin/exportfs -au
> +
> +
> +  # We start here
> +
> +  sleep 5
> +
> +  start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --quiet \
> +      --name nfsd --user 0 --signal 9
> +
> +  # We end here
> +
> 
 > Script here: (taken from sarge in March).
 >
 > http://www.geocities.com/arhuaco/doc/uml/nfs-kernel-server.txt
 >

This is basically a hard kill on stopping, right? So this is most 
important just to make NFS not to write on any file.

But I have not found any file my NFS server is writing into, so I guess 
that in my case this is no better. Anyway kernel-server is worth a try, 
although I preferred the user space solution.


Thanks a lot for your help.

-- 
Héctor Cordobés

Platform group
Core Networks Division
Motorola España, SA