Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Global File System 2
Red Hat Global File System 2
Global File System 2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Global File System 2
Red Hat Global File System 2
Edition 3
Copyright © 2009 Red Hat Inc.. This material may only be distributed subject to the terms and
conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, V1.0 or later (the latest version of the OPL is
presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
Red Hat and the Red Hat "Shadow Man" logo are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United
States and other countries.
All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.
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This book provides information about installing, configuring, and maintaining Red Hat GFS2 (Red Hat
Global File System 2) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
Introduction v
1. Audience ........................................................................................................................ v
2. Related Documentation ................................................................................................... v
3. Feedback ....................................................................................................................... vi
4. Document Conventions ................................................................................................... vi
4.1. Typographic Conventions ..................................................................................... vi
4.2. Pull-quote Conventions ....................................................................................... viii
4.3. Notes and Warnings ............................................................................................ ix
1. GFS2 Overview 1
1.1. Before Setting Up GFS2 ............................................................................................... 1
1.2. Differences between GFS and GFS2 ............................................................................. 2
1.2.1. GFS2 Command Names .................................................................................... 2
1.2.2. Additional Differences Between GFS and GFS2 .................................................. 3
1.2.3. GFS2 Performance Improvements ...................................................................... 4
2. Getting Started 7
2.1. Prerequisite Tasks ........................................................................................................ 7
2.2. Initial Setup Tasks ........................................................................................................ 7
3. Managing GFS2 9
3.1. Making a File System ................................................................................................... 9
3.2. Mounting a File System .............................................................................................. 12
3.3. Unmounting a File System .......................................................................................... 14
3.4. GFS2 Quota Management .......................................................................................... 15
3.4.1. Setting Quotas ................................................................................................ 15
3.4.2. Displaying Quota Limits and Usage .................................................................. 16
3.4.3. Synchronizing Quotas ...................................................................................... 18
3.4.4. Enabling/Disabling Quota Enforcement ............................................................. 19
3.4.5. Enabling Quota Accounting .............................................................................. 19
3.5. Growing a File System ............................................................................................... 20
3.6. Adding Journals to a File System ................................................................................ 21
3.7. Data Journaling .......................................................................................................... 23
3.7.1. Enabling and Disabling Data Journaling with the chattr Command ................... 23
3.7.2. Enabling and Disabling Data Journaling with the gfs2_tool Command .............. 24
3.8. Configuring atime Updates ........................................................................................ 25
3.8.1. Mount with relatime ..................................................................................... 25
3.8.2. Mount with noatime ....................................................................................... 26
3.9. Suspending Activity on a File System .......................................................................... 26
3.10. Repairing a File System ............................................................................................ 27
3.11. Bind Mounts and Context-Dependent Path Names ...................................................... 29
A. Converting a File System from GFS to GFS2 31
B. Revision History 33
Index 35
iii
iv
Introduction
Welcome to the Global File System Configuration and Administration document. This book provides
information about configuring and maintaining Red Hat GFS2 (Red Hat Global File System 2). Red
Hat GFS2 can run in a single node or as part of a cluster configuration in Red Hat Cluster Suite in
RHEL 5.3 and later. For information about Red Hat Cluster Suite see Red Hat Cluster Suite Overview
and Configuring and Managing a Red Hat Cluster.
HTML and PDF versions of all the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux manuals and release notes are
available online at http://www.redhat.com/docs/.
1. Audience
This book is intended primarily for Linux system administrators who are familiar with the following
activities:
• Linux system administration procedures, including kernel configuration
• Installation and configuration of shared storage networks, such as Fibre Channel SANs
2. Related Documentation
For more information about using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, refer to the following resources:
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide — Provides information regarding installation of Red
Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Deployment Guide — Provides information regarding the deployment,
configuration and administration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
For more information about Red Hat Cluster Suite, refer to the following resources:
• Red Hat Cluster Suite Overview — Provides a high level overview of the Red Hat Cluster Suite.
• Configuring and Managing a Red Hat Cluster — Provides information about installing, configuring
and managing Red Hat Cluster components.
• LVM Administrator's Guide: Configuration and Administration — Provides a description of the
Logical Volume Manager (LVM), including information on running LVM in a clustered environment.
• Global File System: Configuration and Administration — Provides information about installing,
configuring, and maintaining Red Hat GFS (Red Hat Global File System).
• Using Device-Mapper Multipath — Provides information about using the Device-Mapper Multipath
feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Using GNBD with Global File System — Provides an overview on using Global Network Block
Device (GNBD) with Red Hat GFS.
• Linux Virtual Server Administration — Provides information on configuring high-performance
systems and services with the Linux Virtual Server (LVS).
• Red Hat Cluster Suite Release Notes — Provides information about the current release of Red Hat
Cluster Suite.
v
Introduction
Red Hat Cluster Suite documentation and other Red Hat documents are available in HTML,
PDF, and RPM versions on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Documentation CD and online at http://
www.redhat.com/docs/.
3. Feedback
If you spot a typo, or if you have thought of a way to make this manual better, we would love to
hear from you. Please submit a report in Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/) against the
component rh-cs.
Be sure to mention the manual's identifier:
rh-gfs2(EN)-5 (2009-01-05T15:15)
By mentioning this manual's identifier, we know exactly which version of the guide you have.
If you have a suggestion for improving the documentation, try to be as specific as possible. If you have
found an error, please include the section number and some of the surrounding text so we can find it
easily.
4. Document Conventions
This manual uses several conventions to highlight certain words and phrases and draw attention to
specific pieces of information.
In PDF and paper editions, this manual uses typefaces drawn from the Liberation Fonts1 set. The
Liberation Fonts set is also used in HTML editions if the set is installed on your system. If not,
alternative but equivalent typefaces are displayed. Note: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and later includes
the Liberation Fonts set by default.
4.1. Typographic Conventions
Four typographic conventions are used to call attention to specific words and phrases. These
conventions, and the circumstances they apply to, are as follows.
Mono-spaced Bold
Used to highlight system input, including shell commands, file names and paths. Also used to highlight
key caps and key-combinations. For example:
To see the contents of the file my_next_bestselling_novel in your current
working directory, enter the cat my_next_bestselling_novel command at the
shell prompt and press Enter to execute the command.
The above includes a file name, a shell command and a key cap, all presented in Mono-spaced Bold
and all distinguishable thanks to context.
Key-combinations can be distinguished from key caps by the hyphen connecting each part of a key-
combination. For example:
1 https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/
vi
Typographic Conventions
Press Enter to execute the command.
Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to the first virtual terminal. Press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return
to your X-Windows session.
The first sentence highlights the particular key cap to press. The second highlights two sets of three
key caps, each set pressed simultaneously.
If source code is discussed, class names, methods, functions, variable names and returned values
mentioned within a paragraph will be presented as above, in Mono-spaced Bold. For example:
File-related classes include filesystem for file systems, file for files, and dir for
directories. Each class has its own associated set of permissions.
Proportional Bold
This denotes words or phrases encountered on a system, including application names; dialogue
box text; labelled buttons; check-box and radio button labels; menu titles and sub-menu titles. For
example:
Choose System > Preferences > Mouse from the main menu bar to launch Mouse
Preferences. In the Buttons tab, click the Left-handed mouse check box and click
Close to switch the primary mouse button from the left to the right (making the mouse
suitable for use in the left hand).
To insert a special character into a gedit file, choose Applications > Accessories
> Character Map from the main menu bar. Next, choose Search > Find… from the
Character Map menu bar, type the name of the character in the Search field and click
Next. The character you sought will be highlighted in the Character Table. Double-
click this highlighted character to place it in the Text to copy field and then click the
Copy button. Now switch back to your document and choose Edit > Paste from the
gedit menu bar.
The above text includes application names; system-wide menu names and items; application-specific
menu names; and buttons and text found within a GUI interface, all presented in Proportional Bold and
all distinguishable by context.
Note the > shorthand used to indicate traversal through a menu and its sub-menus. This is to avoid
the difficult-to-follow 'Select Mouse from the Preferences sub-menu in the System menu of the main
menu bar' approach.
Mono-spaced Bold Italic or Proportional Bold Italic
Whether Mono-spaced Bold or Proportional Bold, the addition of Italics indicates replaceable or
variable text. Italics denotes text you do not input literally or displayed text that changes depending on
circumstance. For example:
To connect to a remote machine using ssh, type ssh username@domain.name at
a shell prompt. If the remote machine is example.com and your username on that
machine is john, type ssh john@example.com.
The mount -o remount file-system command remounts the named file
system. For example, to remount the /home file system, the command is mount -o
remount /home.
vii
Introduction
To see the version of a currently installed package, use the rpm -q package
command. It will return a result as follows: package-version-release.
Note the words in bold italics above — username, domain.name, file-system, package, version and
release. Each word is a placeholder, either for text you enter when issuing a command or for text
displayed by the system.
Aside from standard usage for presenting the title of a work, italics denotes the first use of a new and
important term. For example:
When the Apache HTTP Server accepts requests, it dispatches child processes
or threads to handle them. This group of child processes or threads is known as
a server-pool. Under Apache HTTP Server 2.0, the responsibility for creating and
maintaining these server-pools has been abstracted to a group of modules called
Multi-Processing Modules (MPMs). Unlike other modules, only one module from the
MPM group can be loaded by the Apache HTTP Server.
4.2. Pull-quote Conventions
Two, commonly multi-line, data types are set off visually from the surrounding text.
Output sent to a terminal is set in Mono-spaced Roman and presented thus:
books Desktop documentation drafts mss photos stuff svn
books_tests Desktop1 downloads images notes scripts svgs
Source-code listings are also set in Mono-spaced Roman but are presented and highlighted as
follows:
package org.jboss.book.jca.ex1;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
public class ExClient
{
public static void main(String args[])
throws Exception
{
InitialContext iniCtx = new InitialContext();
Object ref = iniCtx.lookup("EchoBean");
EchoHome home = (EchoHome) ref;
Echo echo = home.create();
System.out.println("Created Echo");
System.out.println("Echo.echo('Hello') = " + echo.echo("Hello"));
}
}
viii