# Cluster FS

## questionaire

Hi there,

we have a cluster with currently 2 nodes (later 10 nodes). The needed files get served by an iSCSI storage. I connected everything (i can access the iSCSI blockdevice from all nodes) and now i'm in the big problem to make a decission what file system to use.

reiser, ext3, ext4 and all that stuff doesnt work since all nodes will do IO, and i dont want to break the filesystem.

So the conclusion is to go with GFS or OCFS. Not a big deal for me, but the huge problem is - there isnt a single tutorial for these weird filesystems. I only found some old pieces dated from 2004 - 2008, none of them up to date and no tutorial really explaining what is needed for gentoo and how it works.

Is it really that uncommon to do a cluster with a centralized storage? I doubt it. So where did all the info go? Do you have any good resources on how to install either GFS or OCFS?

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## Mad Merlin

Try searching for GFS2 or OCFS2. Both are new projects that replaced the old ones.

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## questionaire

i did research on both but the portage doesnt support them and all the how to's are more than just old.

with custom ebuilds and some tweaking i managed to install ocfs2, but its sad to see such needed things not to be in the portage

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## Mad Merlin

There's multiple components you need for a working clustered filesystem. The most obvious ones are the GFS2 or OCFS2 kernel modules and the DLM kernel module, these have been in the stock kernel for years now and all you need to do is enable them.

There's also a pile of userspace bits that you need. For GFS2, IIRC that's something like clvm, ccs, cman, corosync, openais, rgmanager and possibly a few others. There's also a lot of options... some of those might be mutually exclusive. It's pretty obvious that clvm isn't too loved in Portage these days though, after unmasking the clvm and cman USE flags for lvm2, you'll find that it depends on an ebuild that doesn't exist anymore, which is indeed unfortunate.

If it's not already painfully obvious, clustered filesystems are really really complicated in comparison to a regular filesystem, unfortunately that also means they don't get used as much.

Edit: If you actually get one or the other working, you should file a bug and attach any relevant instructions/ebuilds so that the next person who comes along has it easier. Even better would be to get things into the sunrise overlay: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332869

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## questionaire

i managed to get OCFS2 up and running, i'll think about filing it

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