On second thought, your scenario would not be possible even if you initiate a 
server with the current config plus only itself.
I agree that you should not do union of old and new configs.
Alex

Sent from mobile

On Jul 28, 2012, at 3:26 PM, Jared Cantwell <[email protected]> wrote:

> Having to "make up" a configuration for new servers that are non voting 
> followers is something I keep getting stuck on, because if a couple of these 
> servers start with just the wrong configuration they can all have an 
> unspecified version and actually form a standalone quorum and not know a 
> newer one exists. I would feel much better if new servers that are to become 
> non voting followers could simply copy the configuration file from an 
> existing voting participant (including  the version) and still start up. This 
> is particularly an issue for us because servers with arbitrarily old 
> configurations can start up at any time, and if the wrong things happen then 
> they could form a quorum if they have the right "bootstrap" configurations 
> with unspecified versions. 
> 
> Does this make sense as a concern? We may patch the server to allow starting 
> up without its myid in the configuration. 
> 
> Jared 
> 
> On Jul 28, 2012, at 12:15 PM, Alexander Shraer <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> yes, if the server reboots (this is when it would read the config file). 
>> Otherwise, it has the last config in memory (this is held in a 
>> QuorumVerifier object in QuorumPeer) and it doesn't look in the config file. 
>> 
>> BTW the config file (when overwritten by the system) has an auto-generated 
>> version using which we know which config is later than which.  Users are not 
>> supposed to specify this version at all - its supposed to be managed by the 
>> system. If you replace the file and set the version to something low or not 
>> specify it at all, chances are that the config file will be overwritten 
>> during synchronization with the leader or during communication with other 
>> servers in FastLeaderElection.
>> If you set it to something high, its possible that your server will be able 
>> to convince others that this is the latest config :)
>> 
>> Alex
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Jared Cantwell <[email protected]> 
>> wrote:
>> No that you would want to do this, but simply overwriting a config file 
>> would "uncommit" a configuration and make that server think the last 
>> committed configuration was whatever is in the file?
>> 

Reply via email to