Hello, Setup: ------ I have two RedHat 7.2 (2.4.9-31) boxes that are attached to one external RAID unit. Both boxes are able to see the RAID unit as /dev/sdb1, but only one box mounts (cat /proc/mounts yields: /dev/sdb1 /nas ext3 rw 0 0) the unit at any give time. The other box listens, via heartbeat (linux-ha), waiting to mount the RAID unit, should it's sibling crash (actually, heartbeat no longer heard via serial and ethernet). The /nas directory is NFS exported with the rw,sync,no_wdelay options to several Linux and Tru64 boxes. Questions: ---------- What will I encounter should the primary (i.e. box currently mounting /dev/sdb1) crash, and the backup take over? From my simulations, I see the backup mount /dev/sdb1 but I get the following in it's /var/log/messages: nas2 kernel: kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds nas2 kernel: EXT3-fs warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended nas2 kernel: EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.11, 3 Oct 2001 on sd(8,17), internal journal nas2 kernel: EXT3-fs: recovery complete. nas2 kernel: EXT3-fs mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. My limited understanding is that since both the primary box (named "nas1") and the secondary (named "nas2") are keeping a metadata-only journal, that data updates were flushed to disk (on nas1) and the metadata changes were not committed, thus nas2 sees an inconsistent filesystem when mounting. Am I correct? If we run with nas2 box for a while, and then decide to switch back to nas1, how will nas1 and it's journal playback, react to the changes committed by nas2 since the crash? Would it be safer to always run e2fsck on nas2 takeover, prior to mounting /dev/sdb1? Am I wrong in choosing EXT3 over EXT2 in this setup? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Bill Antoniadis
