[DRBD-user] primary/secondary problem

Gernot W. Schmied gernot.schmied at chello.at
Fri Jun 16 21:10:48 CEST 2006

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


Lars Ellenberg wrote:
> / 2006-06-13 13:32:58 +0200
> \ Gernot W. Schmied:
>>>>>> setup (0.7.17 on both machines) on my primary machine suddenly insists
>>>>>> to remain in "secondary" mode. Any idea why?
>>>>> well.
>>>>> what do you mean by "insist"?
>>>>> if you tell it to become primary, what exactly does happen?
>>>>> how do you try to do the "drbdadm primary all"?
>>>>>
>>>> Hmm, the primary node so far always remained primary after setting it
>>>> once regardless of the secondary being reachable and it maintained that
>>>> state regardless of restarting drbd via /etc/init.d/drbd.
>>>> Now it always returns to secondary state when I stop/restart drbd after
>>>> declaring it primary with "drbdadm primary all" before mounting my file
>>>> systems. Maybe it is supposed to be that way but I'd like to understand
>>>> why. Why does it return to secondary state when I stop drbd?
>>> I'd rather ask "what does switch drbd to primary".
>>> the init script (at least my init script) does not.
>>>
>> Mine does now. Should I conclude from your question that both
>> constituents of a drbd cluster start in secondary mode unless altered
>> via init script or heartbeat?



> 
> if you insist on shooting yourself, just go ahead.
> 

Very well, beautiful advice, witty, technically sound, one has to admire
the craftsmanship.

It strikes me as peculiar though that *some* folks here switch to
messiah-ego-mode as soon as somebody dares to say that he does not run
DRBD via heartbeat and sync-cluster. Of course I am running DRBD in
several heartbeat (crypto)clusters, makes the most sense anyway.
However, I was playing with an async configuration where I just power up
a remote secondary node (SOHO workstation) once a day as a replacement
for a daily tape backup, and tell you what, it works well and why
shouldn't it and it serves its purpose at the accepted risk of losing a
day's changes (same with the tape anyway).

So my question was related to an isolated primary node (secondary
powered down) which was declared primary once and why it insists to
return to secondary mode after restart of drbd.

Gernot





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