[Lustre-discuss] Quota setup fails because of OST ordering

[Thomas Roth]

Hi all,

after installing a Lustre test file system consisting of 34 OSTs, I 
encountered a strange error when trying to set up quotas:
lfs quotacheck gave me an "Input/Output error", while in 
/var/log/kern.log I found a Lustre error

LustreError: 20807:0:(quota_check.c:227:lov_quota_check()) lov idx 32 
inactive


Indeed, in /proc/fs/lustre/lov/.../target_obd all 34 OSTs were listed 
and numbered, but number 32 was missing, instead I had a number 34.
Now, in this test cluster each OSS serves two OSTs. I remember I had 
made a mistake with the RAID configuration of about half of the OSTs. 
Therefore I had mounted one OST from each OSS, while the others were 
still formatting. Consequently, after mounting all OSTs, their OST-Names 
or OST-indices were not in OSS machine order, like machine 5 now 
providing OST0008 and OST001a.
I'd like to hear from the experts that this  cannot possibly have any 
influence on the functionality of a Lustre cluster.

That still leaves the question how I managed to produce this gap in the 
OST numbering and why the quota setup should stumble over this.

In the meantime I reformatted all servers, being very careful with the 
OSTs, giving  the MDT some time to stomach any new OST I mounted. Now I 
have the OSTs in "correct" order, no gap in the indices, and lfs 
quotacheck doesn't make trouble ;-|

Regards,
Thomas