I have a legacy ultramonkey configuration in a production environment
that is causing bizarre problems. 2 IBM servers running Debian Sarge
with a 2.6 kernel (custom compiled 2.6.6 kernel), with both servers
running both the syncmaster and syndbackup processes. Unfortunately,
the person who set this up didn't leave a source deb or any notes about
what they did. There are also slight version differences between some
of the components on the two boxes (I know, it's a mess, I didn't crate
it) due to only one of the boxes having had the ultramonkey repository
in sources.list.
This pair has been used with one of them as a primary and the other only
ever briefly taking charge. It seems (this is a set-up that I
inherited) that the primary was failing every 3 or 4 months. The
secondary would then fail if left in master mode for more than a week.
To try and fix this mess, I span up two vanilla Debian Sarge boxes with
the latest ldirectord and hearbeat packages. When I used one of them to
replace the secondary, it died only a few minutes after the primary
failed over to it. It then died again shortly afterwards even on
standby.
When I say "die", I mean complete and immediate freeze with no
indications in the logs and a frozen screen (if a console is connected
at the time). Absolutely no indication of what might be the cause.
I have similar director-pairs in other environments that cause no such
problems. There are three main differences between those systems and
this pair: the healthy systems use
1. Stock Debian 2.6.8 kernels and packages.
2. IPaddr2 rather than IPaddr
3. Connection syncing only in master->slave mode (as opposed to
master->master) or simply not at all.
My feeling with this is that the connection tracking/syncing is at the
root of the problem, possibly the fact that it is doing master->master.
The very speedy death of the vanilla Sarge box that I tried to put in as
a secondary tends to reinforce this in my mind.
Can anybody offer any thoughts?
--
Bruce
The ice-caps are melting, tra-la-la-la. All the world is drowning,
tra-la-la-la-la. -- Tiny Tim.
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