When you use Xsan Admin to remove a metadata controller, all metadata controllers must be accessible to do so. In many an upgrade scenario this has turned out to be challenging. Therefore, you can remove a metadata controller using the configuration files. To do so, open /Library/Preferences/Xsan/fsnameservers. In this file, you’ll see the IP address of all active metadata controllers that are used to manage any (or no) volumes as follows: 192.168.210.2 192.168.210.3 192.168.210.4 Remove the line with the IP address of the system you’ll be removing so it looks like the following, assuming you’re removing 192.168.210.2): 192.168.210.3 192.168.210.4 This needs to be repeated for all metadata controllers and clients.…
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Resolve Error 1006.0005 For Qlogic Switches
Error 1006.0005 can appear on a Qlogic fibre channel switch when using ACL zones. If you don’t need ACL zones, then the easiest thing to do here is to swap the offending zone back to a soft zone. To do so, open the Qlogic Switch and use the Edit menu to select “Edit Zoning …” From the zone editor, right-click on the zone to change and click on Set Zone Type. From the Set Zone Type pop-up, click on the option for Soft. Save the zoning and provided that you can actually use soft zones you are done. Now, what if you can’t use soft zoning? In that case, I…
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One Liner Script To Check If Xsan Is Installed
The following will tell you whether Xsan has been installed on a client system. Here we’re checking if the file exists using the [] for a file (I always quote paths that aren’t variables when doing this type of thing) and and then echoing a response that it does. [ -f "/Library/Preferences/Xsan/uuid" ] && echo "Xsan is installed" If the file exists, we could also perform some other tasks or use an else and make changes, like copying an authorization and fsnameservers file into the directory when installing StorNext clients on OS X. The way I would likely do this, if I were saying if the uuid file doesn’t exist,…
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Mavericks Server Logs
OS X Mavericks has a lot of scripts used for enabling services, setting states, changing hostnames and the like. Once upon a time there was a script for OS X Server called server setup. It was a beautiful but too simplistic kind of script. Today, much of that logic has been moved out into more granular scripts, kept in /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup, used by the server to perform all kinds of tasks. These scripts are, like a lot of other things in Mountain Lion Server. Some of these include the configuration of amavisd, docecot and alerts. These scripts can also be used for migrating services and data, such as /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/ServerSetup/MigrationExtras/30-ipfwmigrator. Sometimes the…
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Xsan Command Line Options In Mavericks Server
Before I get started, I just want to point out that the old commands all still work. There are some newer things, but nothing earth shattering. Let’s start out with what’s actually available in the Server Admin CLI: serveradmin. The serveradmin command, followed by settings, followed by san shows a few pieces of information: bash-3.2# serveradmin settings san san:computers = _empty_array san:primaryController = "95C99FB1-80F2-5016-B9C3-BE3916E6E5DC" san:ownerEmail = "krypted@me.com" san:sanName = "krypted" san:desiredSearchPolicy:_array_index:0 = "" san:serialNumbers = _empty_array san:dsType = 0 san:ownerName = "Charles Edge" san:managePrivateNetwork = yes san:metadataNetwork = "10.0.0.0/24" san:numberOfFibreChannelPorts = 2 san:role = "CONTROLLER" Here, we see the metadata network, the GUID of the primary (active) MDC, the name…
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Configure Xsan in Mavericks Server
The first thing you should do when installing Xsan in any OS, much less Mavericks, is make sure your hostnames are awesome. Forward, reverse, views if you use them, etc. You have to have a dedicated metadata Ethernet network, so you should have a zone entry for both your primary and metadata network interfaces. You should also have fibre channel and storage configured and ready to use. Given that a lot of storage arrays take a long time to configure these days, I like to actually start that and then do my server setups while my LUNs/arrays are baking. Setting Up Xsan Once you have DNS entries, storage and fibre…
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Enable and Disable the Xsan Debug Log
You can gather information manually about an Xsan volume using the cvgather command. This occurs per filesystem. For example, to run on a volume named krypted, use the following command: cvgather -f krypted -o /temp/krypted.debug You can also enable the debug log to get much more detailed information about each transaction to/from the volume and metadata controllers. To enable the debug log, use the cvdb command. The -g option will show the state of the debugger. The -e option will enable debugging and -d disables. So, to see the status of the debugger: cvdb -g To enable debugging: cvdb -e To disable debugging: cvdb -d To drop files into syslog:…
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MDSChannelPeerCreate and Shared Volumes
These two errors: com.apple.AppleFileServer[8123] MDSChannelPeerCreate: (os/kern) invalid argument MDSChannelPeerRef MDSChannelPeerCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFDictionaryRef): (os/kern) invalid argument I see them frequently when we’re using dynamic or shared storage (e.g. Xsan or removable media) to share volumes between multiple computers and then share those shared volumes to clients through a network sharing protocol (e.g. afp or smb). They usually mean that the system doesn’t have enough permissions to do those MDSChannelPeerCreate processes. Therefore, we need to open those permissions up a little and then let the file sharing services restart. I usually do it this way: serveradmin stop afp serveradmin stop smb chown -R root:staff /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.fseventsd chmod -R 770 /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.fseventsd chown -R root:staff /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.Spotlight-V100…
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Changing Metadata Networks From The Command Line In Xsan
Awhile back Apple published an article on switching the network interface used in Xsan for Metadata networks. The article provides the following steps: Use Xsan Admin to stop the volumes (see below). In Xsan Admin select Overview. In the lower right corner, click the gear icon and choose “Edit SAN properties”. Select the Metadata Network that you want to use. Click Save. Restart the volumes. Note: If all controllers and clients are not on the same subnet on each network, the Save button will be dimmed. Adjust the clients and controllers so they are on the same subnets. This typically works great; except the fact that the article has been…
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Holy Cow, Batman, My Xsan Volume Is Invisible!
No one could see the Xsan volume. Logged into Xsan Admin, the volume was unmounted for everyone. Mounted the volume and Xsan Admin said it mounted for everyone. No errors in the logs. In a nice place mentally, I stepped away from my desk. The phone rings, no one has access to the volume. Crap, what now? Log in, shows mounted. Log into a client, well, isn’t there. The other volumes are on the desktop. Go to /Volumes and it doesn’t appear there. Go to /Volumes/VOLUMENAME and viola, it’s there. But in the sidebar it’s hidden?!?!?! There aren’t any options in the volume.cfg file in /Library/Preferences/Xsan that deal with this…