Fedora pNFS Client Setup

From Linux NFS

Revision as of 16:40, 30 April 2010

Select Hardware

Select hardware that is capable of running 64-bit os and at a minimum of two GigE copper NIC ports. Connect all necessary network ports to VLAN. For iSCSI target access, it is recommended that you use separate subnets for the backbone and iSCSI.

Installing Fedora

The Install Guide at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/ describes a numerous ways in which to install Fedora. Choose the best method for you.

• Select local disk and take default disk partitions for /boot, /swap LVM etc
• If your block device is accessed through iSCSI then click on “Advanced disk configuration” tab and select iSCSI. If you are using FC you are recommended to unplug Fiber cable before installation and connect back before reboot. Do not initialize Block devices if you are using EMC Unified storage devices (Celerra NAS)
• In order to run the Connectathon test suite you will need the “software development” package.
  • Click on the "Software Development" button in the package install screen similar to this
  • Its also advisable to added in the 'Fedora' repository on the same page.
  • Finally it's also a good idea to do a 'yum -y update' first thing after the install completes. This will ensure you have the most up to date bits available.

Installing pNFS Enabled Fedora kernel

There are two way to install the pNFS enabled kernels. Either using the yum repository or directly downloading

Yum repository - Download the pnfs.repo into /etc/yum.repo.d (Note the pnfs repository is enabled by default). To install the the kernel (and its dependencies) do one of the following:

   yum --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=pnfs install kernel*

or to install debug enabled kernels:

   yum --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=pnfs-debug install kernel*

Direct download - Download pNFS kernel rpms from http://steved.fedorapeople.org/repos/pnfs. You will need following two rpms for non-development use:

kernel-[current_version].pnfs.fc12.x86_64.rpm kernel-firmware-[current_version].pnfs.fc12.noarch.rpm

With the direct downloads you will need periodicity check for updates (latest –build April 22). Using the yum repository doing a 'yum update' will check of updates.

Load pNFS modules

Load the needed modules with the following commands:

   modprobe nfslayoutdriver
   modprobe blocklayoutdrive

To verify pNFS modules are loaded correctly do the following:

   lsmod | grep nfslayout
   nfslayoutdriver        18423  0
   nfs                    353047  3 blocklayoutdriver,nfslayoutdriver

Mount Filesystem

Use the '-o minorversion=1' mount option when mounting the server, similar to:

   mount -t nfs4 -o minorversion=1 <server>:/export  /mnt

To Verify pNFS is up and working, grep for the word 'LAYOUT' in /proc/self/mountstat

   grep LAYOUT /proc/self/mountstat

Generate Traffic

Generate some I/O using “dd” or run “Connectathon ”. You may download Connectathon from http://www.connectathon.org. All tests expected to pass without problem.