The last patch in this email (pvfs2-validate.patch) implements a tool similar to pvfs2-fsck that takes a different approach and adds some different functionality. The first two patches are independent changes to PVFS2 functionality that make it a little easier to look for file system problems.
mgmt-getconfig.patch: ---------------This patch adds a new PVFS_mgmt_getconfig() function to the management interface. It allows you to retrieve the file system and server configuration files verbatim from any arbitrary server in a file system. No protocol changes are necessary because it uses the existing getconfig operation. It also reuses most of the state machine that the client normally uses for retrieving configuration data, with some modifications that allow it to preserve the text buffers in this case. This function is a building block for being able to confirm that the server configuration settings are consistent.
sys-getattr-other-objects.patch: ----------------This patch makes it safe to call PVFS_sys_getattr() directly on underlying objects in a file system (such as datafiles), rather than juse files, directories, and symlinks. This is useful for confirming valid attributes on individual objects. Only two changes were needed: - making sure that only metafiles, dirs, and symlinks get added to the acache (attribute cache)
- copying the size out for datafiles pvfs2-validate.patch: ----------------This adds a command line tool called pvfs2-validate that is modeled after pvfs2-fsck, but diverges in a few ways:
- It uses a new fsck-utils API (PVFS_fsck_XXX()) to do most of the work. This API includes functions for validating various types of PVFS2 objects and checking for problems. The PVFS_fsck_XXX() functions just make normal PVFS_sys_XXX() and PVFS_mgmt_XXX() calls under the covers. It includes functions that can walk directory trees as well, so that you can just call one top level function to validate an full tree. This api could possibly be reused by other admin tools.
- It can be run on individual directory trees or files rather than the entire file system. This is helpful for diagnosing particular suspected problem areas on the file system when you don't have time to run a full fsck on a large file system. Running pvfs2-validate on any directory other than root disables the check for stranded objects, however, because it has to parse the whole tree to make sure that all objects are accounted for.
- It can do some basic configuration file sanity checking. To do this, it retrieves the fs.conf from all servers, strips out whitespace and comments, and then looks for differences. If any discrepancies are found, it prints a warning and indicates which particular servers appear to be using a different fs.conf and what the actual difference is (using the first server as the "golden" model).
- It can (optionally) check for bad practice. These are issues that, while not strictly a file system problem, can cause confusion for end users. Examples include special characters (like * or ?) in file names, and relative symbolic links that leave the file system (because these will break if the mount point is changed).
- As part of its validity checking, it makes sure that all attribute values returned for each object are sane, rather than just confirming their existance. For example, does each file have at least one datafile, are symlink targets non-null, is size > 0, are the object types correct, etc.
- Default output is mostly silent, rather than printing diagnostic information for every valid object encountered.
However, there are a few things that pvfs2-validate does _NOT_ do at this time:
- it does not make any attempt to repair problems; it only reports them - it still needs more strenuous testing Comments and suggestions are welcome... -Phil
mgmt-getconfig.patch.gz
Description: application/gzip
pvfs2-validate.patch.gz
Description: application/gzip
sys-getattr-other-objects.patch.gz
Description: application/gzip
_______________________________________________ Pvfs2-developers mailing list Pvfs2-developers@beowulf-underground.org http://www.beowulf-underground.org/mailman/listinfo/pvfs2-developers
