[Gluster-devel] Replication Initialization from Existing Directory

[gordan at bobich.net]

Hi,

I'm trying to move a large volume of data from local disk to GlusterFS. I 
could just copy it, but copying ~ 1TB of data is slow. So, what I've tried 
to do (with some randomly generated data for a test case) is to specify 
the directory already containing the data as the data source for the 
underlying storage brick.

I then fire up glusterfsd and glusterfs on the same machine, and I can see 
all the data via the mountpoint.

On another node, I start glusterfsd and glusterfs, and I can see and read 
the data. But, the data doesn't appear on the underlying data brick on the 
2nd node after I have done cat * > /dev/null in the mounted directory.

So it looks like GluserFS isn't causing the data to get copied on reads in 
this scenario.

Can anyone hazard a guess as to why this might be? I am guessing that it's 
to do with the fact that the xattrs/metaddata have not been initialized by 
glusterfs because the files were added "underneath" rather than via the 
mountpoint. Is there a workaround for this, e.g. by manually setting some 
xattrs on the files (in a hope that this might be faster than copying the 
whole volume)?

Thanks.

Gordan