Merge tag 'v3.10.55' into update
[GitHub/mt8127/android_kernel_alcatel_ttab.git] / Documentation / filesystems / gfs2.txt
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1Global File System
2------------------
3
49f30789 4https://fedorahosted.org/cluster/wiki/HomePage
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5
6GFS is a cluster file system. It allows a cluster of computers to
7simultaneously use a block device that is shared between them (with FC,
8iSCSI, NBD, etc). GFS reads and writes to the block device like a local
9file system, but also uses a lock module to allow the computers coordinate
10their I/O so file system consistency is maintained. One of the nifty
11features of GFS is perfect consistency -- changes made to the file system
12on one machine show up immediately on all other machines in the cluster.
13
25985edc 14GFS uses interchangeable inter-node locking mechanisms, the currently
e9ccb73a 15supported mechanisms are:
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17 lock_nolock -- allows gfs to be used as a local file system
18
19 lock_dlm -- uses a distributed lock manager (dlm) for inter-node locking
20 The dlm is found at linux/fs/dlm/
21
e9ccb73a 22Lock_dlm depends on user space cluster management systems found
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23at the URL above.
24
25To use gfs as a local file system, no external clustering systems are
26needed, simply:
27
2fcb4a12 28 $ mkfs -t gfs2 -p lock_nolock -j 1 /dev/block_device
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29 $ mount -t gfs2 /dev/block_device /dir
30
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31If you are using Fedora, you need to install the gfs2-utils package
32and, for lock_dlm, you will also need to install the cman package
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33and write a cluster.conf as per the documentation. For F17 and above
34cman has been replaced by the dlm package.
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35
36GFS2 is not on-disk compatible with previous versions of GFS, but it
37is pretty close.
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38
39The following man pages can be found at the URL above:
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40 fsck.gfs2 to repair a filesystem
41 gfs2_grow to expand a filesystem online
42 gfs2_jadd to add journals to a filesystem online
49f30789 43 tunegfs2 to manipulate, examine and tune a filesystem
e9ccb73a 44 gfs2_convert to convert a gfs filesystem to gfs2 in-place
4cb947b5 45 mkfs.gfs2 to make a filesystem