samba - Jun 2005 - Can we export Cluster File System mounted partitions using Samba?

Hi All,
I was wondering if SAMBA server can be used to export CFS (Cluster
File System) mounted partitions. That is, can you view a CFS directory
present on a UNIX machine, from a Windows machine, with the SAMBA
server running on the UNIX machine without any hitch. If so is there
any issue related to performance or something? Could you please
clarify this for me?

Also can multiple SAMBA servers running on multiple machines which
have the same CFS mount point  export the same directory without any
problem?
I want this info urgently.

Thanking you in advance,
Sudhindra.

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Sudhindra Prasad wrote:
| Hi All,
| I was wondering if SAMBA server can be used to
| export CFS (Cluster File System) mounted partitions.
| That is, can you view a CFS directory present on a
| UNIX machine, from a Windows machine, with the SAMBA
| server running on the UNIX machine without any hitch.
| If so is there any issue related to performance or
| something? Could you please clarify this for me?
|
| Also can multiple SAMBA servers running on multiple
| machines which have the same CFS mount point  export
| the same directory without any problem?

As a user space daemon, smbd doesn't really care about the
type of underlying file system as long as it is posix
compliant.  However, the difficulty in clustering Samba is
the state needed for each session on each node.  The state
needs to be shared among all nodes exporting the same
directory tree in order to get share modes and oplocks
correct.

This state is stored in various tdbs.  These tdb's
are mmap()'d on each node so if your share the tdb's
between nodes (assuming your file system gets this
right in the first place), the shared memory performance
better be really good.

btw...if you had searched some, this information has
been discussed on the mailing lists before and you would
probably find some presentations on the topic as well.



cheers, jerry
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