[Gluster-devel] gluster volume file

[Jeff Darcy]

On 09/26/2013 10:33 AM, Muralidhar Balcha wrote:
> I am experimenting with some custom translators. To test them I manually
> edit the volume file to load my  translators. It looks like gluster is
> aggressively maintaining the consistency of the original volume file and
> overwrites my changes every time I restart the volume. How do I configure
> gluster not to over write my changes?

Yes, GlusterFS does aggressively try to maintain consistency of volfiles with
the current configuration.  Having probably written more third-party or
experimental translators than anyone I agree that this is incredibly
inconvenient, but it probably still avoids more problems than it creates.
There *is* a hook to add custom translators, so that they'll get re-added any
time the volfile is regenerated.  Details here:

http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Glusterfs-filter

If you want to write such a filter in Python, there's a library called
volfilter.py that can parse/manipulate volfiles.  I've used it for several
different projects, and a version is included in the GlusterFS source tree.

With respect to more general support for custom translators via the CLI and so
on, I suggest following this feature proposal:

http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/Easy_addition_of_custom_translators

Even better, chip in with some suggestions of what you think the interface
should look like, since that's not entirely clear yet.  Thanks!