Specifications

LifeKeeper Operations
System
Panic on
Locked
Shared
Devices
LifeKeeper uses a lock to protect shared data from being accessed by other servers on
a shared SCSI Bus. If LifeKeeper cannot access a device as a result of another server
taking the lock on a device, then a critical error has occurred and quick action should be
taken or data can be corrupted. When this condition is detected, LifeKeeper enables a
feature that will cause the system to panic.
If LifeKeeper is stopped by some means other than ‘/etc/init.d/lifekeeper
stop-nofailover’ with shared devices still reserved (this could be caused by
executinginit s), then the LifeKeeper locking mechanism may trigger a kernel panic
when the other server recovers the resource(s). All resources must be placed out-of-
service before stopping LifeKeeper in this manner.
nolock
Option
When using storage applications with locking and following recommendations for the
NFS mount options, SPS requires the additional nolock option be set, e.g.
rw,nolock,bg,hard,nointr,tcp,nfsvers=3,timeo=600,rsize=32768,w
size=32768,actimeo=0.
Recoveri
ng Out-
of-
Service
Hierarch
ies
As part of the recovery following the failure of a LifeKeeper server, resource hierarchies
that were configured on the failed server but which were notin-serviceanywhere at the
time of the server failure are recovered on the highest priorityaliveserver at the time of
the failure. This is the case no matter where theout-of-servicehierarchy was last in
service, including the failed server, the recovering server, or some other server in the
cluster.
Coexiste
nce with
Linux
Firewalls
and
SELinux
The firewall and SELinux are enabled upon installation. After installation is complete,
SELinux should be disabled and the firewall should be modified.
LifeKeeper will not install or function if the SELinux mode is "enabled" or
"permissive."To disable SELinux in RedHat, run the system-config-
securitylevel-tui tool from the console of the host system. While SELinux for
SLES 11 SP1 is available, it too must be disabled
(http://www.novell.com/linux/releasen.../SUSE-SLES/11/).
AppArmor (for distributions that use this security model) may be enabled.
LifeKeeper will function if a host firewall is enabled. However, unless absolutely
necessary, it is recommended that the firewall be disabled and that the LifeKeeper
protected resources reside behind another shielding firewall.
If LifeKeeper must coexist on firewall enabled hosts, note that LifeKeeper uses specific
ports for communication paths, GUI, IP and Data Replication. When using the Linux
firewall feature, the specific ports that LifeKeeper is using need to be opened.
To disable or modify the RedHat firewall, run the system-config-
securitylevel-tui tool from the console of the host system. To disable or modify
the SUSE firewall, run yast2 and choose Security and Users, then Firewall. Refer to
Running LifeKeeper with a Firewall for details.
Suid
Mount
Option
The suid mount option is the default when mounting as root and is not written to the
/etc/mtab by the mount command. The suid mount option is not needed in LifeKeeper
environments.
SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux215