[Gluster-users] metadata for stat : Should it be identical?

[Robert Hajime Lanning]

On 10/24/13 12:48, Jay Vyas wrote:
> thanks alex... fair enough;
>
>   but how could metadata for a distributed file possibly vary across a
> cluster?  is that expected behaviour.
>
> I guess it tells you that the metadata for the file is not aquired from
> any single location, but rather its determined and stored and maintained
> separately by different machines, and so if one machines time is off, it
> wont share the same view of the file as others.
>
> so i guess im wondering if  thats a bug ? or maybe a feature and i just
> dont realize it yet :) ?

Design philosophy...

There is no metadata server.  When you look at timestamps in stat, you 
are seeing the real stat of the file.

If you have "replica 2" then you have two files.  The stat can come from 
either one.  Mtime will be the modification time of the file referenced 
by the time on the server (not the client.)

One of the strengths of GlusterFS is that it does not have the 
bottleneck/single point of failure of a single metadata server.


-- 
Mr. Flibble
King of the Potato People