Gluster users - Dec 2010 - troubles using glusterfs /home with GNOME on Ubuntu 10.04

Hi,

I tried today using glusterfs 3.1.1 for shared /home on a classic
ldap/nfs-like setup.

With a few workarounds, I achieved to start correctly a gnome session:
1- Mounting nfs with nolock option;
2- symlinking .gconf and .gconfd of users to /tmp/.gconf and /tmp/.gconfd.

Without these tricks, user session get stuck immediately after
entering username/password (any gnome components get loaded, empty
screen).

I don't see any specific error on any gluster logs, is this an
expected behavior?

.xsession-errors:
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=it_IT.
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to
/etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
gnome-session[1333]: WARNING: Application 'gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop'
failed to register before timeout
gnome-session[1333]: WARNING: Application
'gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop' failed to register before timeout
gnome-session[1333]: WARNING: Application
'gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop' failed to register before timeout
gnome-session[1333]: WARNING: Application
'gnome-settings-daemon.desktop' failed to register before timeout
Error setting value: No database available to save your configuration:
Unable to store a value at key '/desktop/gno
me/applications/window_manager/default', as the configuration server
has no writable databases. There are some comm
on causes of this problem: 1) your configuration path file
/etc/gconf/2/path doesn't contain any databases or wasn'
t found 2) somehow we mistakenly created two gconfd processes 3) your
operating system is misconfigured so NFS file
 locking doesn't work in your home directory or 4) your NFS client
machine crashed and didn't properly notify the s
erver on reboot that file locks should be dropped. If you have two
gconfd processes (or had two at the time the sec
ond was launched), logging out, killing all copies of gconfd, and
logging back in may help. If you have stale locks
, remove ~/.gconf*/*lock. Perhaps the problem is that you attempted to
use GConf from two machines at once, and ORB
it still has its default configuration that prevents remote CORBA
connections - put "ORBIIOPIPv4=1" in /etc/orbitrc
. As always, check the user.* syslog for details on problems gconfd
encountered. There can only be one gconfd per h
ome directory, and it must own a lockfile in ~/.gconfd and also
lockfiles in individual storage locations such as ~
/.gconf
(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1398): GLib-GObject-WARNING **:
cannot register existing type `_PolkitError'
(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1398): GLib-CRITICAL **:
g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value ! 0' failed

Thanks.

-- 
Giovanni Toraldo
http://gionn.net/

2010/12/2 Deadpan110 <deadpan110 at gmail.com>:
> Hiya,
>
> I have never tried glusterfs with /home but from what I understand
> (anyone please correct me if I am wrong), locking on the glusterfs NFS
> server is not 100% like real NFS3... and even so... true NFS locking
> is poor anyways.
Yes, as far as I understand googling around, glusterfs doesn't
implement NLM, and many applications that rely on it don't play nice
without it.
> Firefox is a prime example of not being NFS friendly too (not
> glusterfs, but NFS in general), Firefox uses sqlite and that will not
> play nicely over NFS.
The system currently in production is a glusterfs 3.0.5 with
fuse-clients, and I'm investigating some troubles with gvfsd-metadata
and it's database that seems to get corrupted.
I was evaluating the possibility to switch to NFS-client and glusterfs
3.1, but it's really not a solution due to locks.

I've got problems with corrupted firefox profiles in the past, but
disappeared after a glusterfs upgrade (don't remember which version i
was using, probably 3.0.2).
> I have had some success using native glusterfs mounting (fuse) for use
> with locking, and version 3.1.1 (i have only used GA9 so far) seemed
> stable.
My next step would probably be upgrade to 3.0.6 or 3.1.1, both with
fuse-clients.
> Again, I have not used for a desktop gnome environment, but would
> suggest you give it a try.
Many thanks you for your thoughts.

-- 
Giovanni Toraldo
http://gionn.net/