On documentation (Re: [Linux-cluster] 4 node cluster even split)

[Janne Peltonen]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 09:17:41AM +0100, Patrick Caulfield wrote:
> > It would be nice to see other implementations that vary from the typical
> > 1 vote per node cluster.
> Oh, it's not uncommon. I used to do this with a 96 node VAX cluster way-back-when!
> The main reason it's not a the front of the documentation is that you really
> need to know what you are doing with that sort of system. If people start
> arbitrarily increasing the votes of nodes just to keep quorum they could get
> themselves into some horrible data-corrupting scenarios.

That's probably very true.

But on the other hand, managing a cluster /is/ a bit more challenging
task overall than everyday system administration. Reading the csgfs
documentation, I got the feeling that the writer is trying to explain an
inherently complicated task to a complete newbie by leaving relevant
information out. For example, there is hardly any mention about the
command line tools that are much more versatile than the GUI. It seemed
to me even that there weren't any (or, at least, many) pointers to more
in-depth information...

How to put it? People start doing stupid things if they need to do
something and aren't told how to do it right.

About the question at hand, it wouldn't probably hurt if there was an
example or two in the QDisk man page. Or on a web page, with a pointer
in the documentation (or FAQ). Or, yes, in this list. :)


--Janne
-- 
Janne Peltonen <janne.peltonen at helsinki.fi>