HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share - Manual (Page 41)

Starting a file system 3–9
You can expect a starting service to go to the
recovering
or
running
state after about 1 minute. The
recovering
state indicates that client nodes were connected to the service before it was stopped and
those client nodes have not yet reconnected. The state of the service changes as follows, depending on the
success of the client nodes in reconnecting to the service in the period after the service starts:
• If all of the originally connected client nodes reconnect to the service successfully, the service goes to
the
running
state as soon as the reconnections are completed.
• If some of the original client nodes reconnect, but others fail to reconnect (because they were shut
down while the file system was stopped), the service remains in the
recovering
state for up to ten
minutes, and then goes to the
running
state.
• If none of the original clients reconnect, the service stays in the
recovering
state until the first new
client connection attempt. Approximately five minutes after this connection attempt, the service goes
into the
running
state.
When any service is in the
recovering
state, all client access (mount, unmount, I/O) is stalled and will
not resume until the service goes into the
running
state.
The timings described above are based on the default timeouts of the file system software.
3.8.1 Responding to formatting messages from the start filesystem command
Normally, the MDS and OST devices assigned to a file system are formatted when the file system is created.
However, the
start filesystem
command can also format MDS and OST devices when necessary.
When the
start filesystem
command is run, it checks whether there are file system devices that need
to be formatted; if it finds any such devices, it displays a message to allow you to decide whether to format
the devices. In the following circumstances, the command will detect devices that need to be formatted:
• If the
create filesystem
command failed before completing, and the devices were not all
formatted
• If additional OST devices were added to the file system (using the
modify filesystem
command—see Section 5.6.1)
However, if the system database has become corrupted, the
start filesystem
command may report
that devices need to be formatted when in fact the devices are formatted and may have already been used
and contain data. In such cases, if MDS or OST devices are formatted unnecessarily, data will be lost. If the
start filesystem
command indicates that there are unformatted devices, investigate whether there is
a valid reason why devices may need to be formatted (for example, in the circumstances listed above). If
the file system has been operating normally, and no new OST devices have been added to the file system,
you can choose to start the file system without formatting any devices.
The following is an example of the output from the
start filesystem
command when unformatted
devices are detected:
sfs> start filesystem scratch
Warning: the following filesystem devices do not appear to have been
formatted:
mds22
Normally this happens when a create filesystem command fails or new OSTs
have been added but not yet formatted.
If the create filesystem command failed or new OSTs are being added, you
should format the devices.
If you have already been successfully using the filesystem, and are not
adding new OSTs to the filesystem you should not format devices because
you will lose data.
Do you want to format the devices? (yes/no/cancel) [n]:
The default is
no
—that is, the devices will not be formatted.