[DRBD-user] drbd not syncing when iscsi-target is running ?

Lars Ellenberg lars.ellenberg at linbit.com
Tue Nov 11 18:11:27 CET 2008

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


On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:35:45PM +0100, Arnold Hendriks wrote:
> Arnold Hendriks wrote:
>> I'm crudely testing whether replication works at all using 'dd':
>> at m1: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/drbd4 bs=512 count=1 conv=fsync  
>> oflag=sync seek=0
>> at m2: less -f /dev/drbd4
>>
>> Seeing the bytes change, I assume things are working. Now I start  
>> iscsitarget (ietd daemon) which has been configured to export  
>> /dev/drbd4, and without doing anything else on the machines, it seems  
>> the syncs between m1 and m2 have stopped. Doing a new 'dd' on m1  
>> doesn't update the data I see on /dev/drbd4 on m2 anymore. After I  
>> stop iscsi-target, I can see the changes I made on m2. Starting  
>> iscsi-target makes the problem reappear.
> I discovered something new, after Jürgen's hint about trying to overflow  
> the caches. Running a 8GB dd showed all drives writing in iostat, so  
> there was definately data coming in. But still I didn't see changes
>
> However, after running 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' to free the  
> pagecache (which I found on http://linux-mm.org/Drop_Caches) the changes  
> _are_ visible with 'less -f /dev/drbd4'. So with this test sequence on  
> my system:
>
> m2: less -f /dev/drbd4        (I see data starting with <96>)
> m1: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/drbd4 bs=512 count=1 conv=fsync  
> oflag=sync seek=0
> m2: less -f /dev/drbd4        (I still see data starting with <96>)
> m2: echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> m2 : less -f /dev/drbd4        (I see new data)
>
> So somehow it seems drbd did manage to put the data on the underlying  
> block device (or it got there by some other route unknown to me), but is  
> not showing it on /dev/drbd4 until I drop the caches. But it seems the  
> problem has to be on 'm2' somewhere..
>
> Any pointers?

are you sure you did not use "dd ... oflag=direct" ?
if you did, you bypassed the cache,
and your results would be expected.

-- 
: Lars Ellenberg
: LINBIT | Your Way to High Availability
: DRBD/HA support and consulting http://www.linbit.com

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