[Linux-cluster] Fenced node never reboots properly

[Jeroen van den Horn]

All,

We are running some virtual machines on top of ESX that are giving us 
some performance problems but also provide us with a good test-case for 
fencing operations.

Due to some (as of yet unknown) problem the two nodes in the GFS cluster 
do not properly respond to the heartbeats, so node 1 kicks node 2 out of 
the cluster. Node 2 correctly reports in its syslog that it has been 
asked to leave the cluster, node 1 fences node 2 and node 2 initiates a 
shutdown - so far so good.

However during shutdown node 2 executes /etc/rc6.d/S31umountnfs (it's a 
Debian system) which also attempts to unmount the GFS disk - result: 
kernel OOPS. The system continues shutdown until it says 'Will now 
restart.' but that's the end of it. I've tried setting the 
/proc/sys/kernel/panic and added 'panic=5' to the kernel boot options 
but to no avail.

I'm really at a loss here - does anybody have any suggestions on how to 
solve this problem?

Regards,
Jeroen