ADIC Bicycle Accessories 1.3 User Manual

Release Notes

®

A

Product: StorNext FX 1.3
SNFX Client Operating Systems:

SGI IRIX 6.5.26, 27, and 28 (MIPS 64-bit)
Solaris 9 and 10 (SPARC 64-bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3.0,
Updates 4, 5, and 6 (32-bit Intel and AMD; 64-bit for Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 4.0, Updates 1 and 2
(32-bit Intel and AMD; 64-bit Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T)
Red Hat Linux 9.0 (32-bit)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, Service Pack 2 (SLES);
(32-bit Intel and AMD, 64-bit Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T)
IBM AIX 5.2, 5.3 (Power Architecture 64-bit)
HP-UX 11i v2 (PA-RISC and 64-bit Itanium)
Windows 2000, Server 2003, and XP (32-bit Intel and AMD)

Date: April, 2006

Contents

Page Topic

2 Purpose of this Release
2 New Features
3 Operating System Level Requirements

Operating System Level Requirements3
4 Certified System Components
4 System Requirements
7 Configuring LDAP
8 Resolved Issues
8 Resolved Issues
12 Known Issues
21 Documentation

© April 2006, ADIC

DIC and StorNext are registered trademarks of Advanced Digital Information
Corporation. All other product, company, or service names mentioned herein
are the property of their r espective owners.

6-01663-01 Rev A

Purpose of this Release

StorNext FX (SNFX) 1.3 includes several new features and enhancements that extend its capabilities.
These release notes describe these new features and enhancements, as well as currently known issues
and issues that were resolved for this release. These notes also provide drive and auxiliary firmware
compatibility information.

SNFX is a client only version software that is licensed to run in Apple managed environments and used with
an Apple metadata controller. If is fully interoperable and compatible with Apple Xsan.

The first version of SNFX was released with Apple Xsan 1.0. Subsequent releases of SNFX and Apple
Xsan followed this compatibility:

• SNFX 2.5 interoperable and compatible with Xsan 1.1

• SNFX 2.6 interoperable and compatible with Xsan 1.2

• SNFX 1.3 interoperable and compatible with Xsan 1.3

With the release of SNFX 1.3, the version numbering is changed to more closely align with the Apple Xsan
release versioning. This was done to help minimize confusion of compatible SNFX releases with Apple Xsan
releases and to maintain consistency with the Apple Xsan product. The product has not changed, only the
release numbering.

Visit www.adic.com
information and updates about SNFX.

and www.adic.com/adicSupportShell.jsp?Page=supportBulletins for additional

New Features

New features and functionality for SNFX 1.3 include:

• 2TB LUN: 2TB LUN support enables customers to configure LUNS up to and greater than 2TB. This
allows for fewer volumes to store large amounts of data.

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): Simplifies configuration and administration of
mixed environments. LDAP (Active Directory) centralizes the ACL translation necessary for
Windows and UNIX systems to access a shared data set. All Windows servers are pointed to a
single LDAP system for centralized and simplified management of file permissions.

Special Configuration Requirements

For SNFX 1.3, the File System client RAM requirement has changed to a minimum of 512 MB.

2 April 2006, ADIC

Operating System Level Requirements

The following table lists the required operating system levels required to successfully operate SNFX 1.3.

SNFX 1.3 Requirements

Operating System

Platform

AIX 5.2, 5.3 (Power Architecture 64-bit)
HP-UX 11i v2 (PA-RISC and 64-bit Itanium)
IRIX 6.5.26, 27, and 28 (MIPS 64-bit)
Red Hat Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3.0 - Updates 4, 5, and 6

(32-bit Intel and AMD; 64-bit Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T)
Required kernels:
U4 - 2.4.21-27.EL or 2.4.21-27.Elsmp

U5 - 2.4.21-32.0.1.EL or 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp
U6 - 2.4.21-37.EL

Both the kernel and kernel source RPM packages must be installed. Install
all tools necessary to build a kernel module (including compilers) on all
Linux clients and server systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 4.0 - Updates 1 and 2 (32-bit
Intel and AMD; 64-bit Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T)

Required kernels:
Update 1 - 2.6.9-11

Update 2 - 2.6.9-22

Operating System Levels

Red Hat Linux 9 client only (32-bit Intel and AMD)
Required kernel: 2.4.20-31.9.legacy

Solaris S o la ris 9 an d 10 (SPARC 64-bit)

NOTE: Prior to installing StorNext on a Solaris 10 machine, you must install
the Solaris 10 Recommended Patch Cluster dated March 10, 2006 or later.

To gain support for LUNs greater than 2TB on Solaris10, the following
patches are required:

• 118822-23 (or greater) Kernel Patch

• 118996-03 (or greater) Format Patch

• 119374-07 (or greater) SD and SSD Patch

• 120998-01 (or greater) SD Headers Patch

SuSE Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, Service Pack 2 (SLES); (32-bit Intel and

AMD, 64-bit Itanium, Opteron, and EM64T); kernel 2.6.5-7.191-default.
Both the kernel and kernel source RPM packages must be installed. Install

all tools necessary to build a kernel module (including compilers) on all
Linux clients and server systems.

Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (32-bit Intel and AMD)

April 2006, ADIC 3

Operating System

Platform

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (32-bit Intel and AMD)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 (32-bit Intel and AMD)

Operating System Levels

Certified System Components

This table lists certified system components that support SNFX 1.3.

Component Description

Browsers Netscape 7.x

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and later
Mozilla 1.4 and later
FireFox 1.0 and later

HBA Emulex LP8000, LP850, LP9000, LP90002

QLogic: QLA2200, QLA2310, QLA2340, QLA2342
NFS Versions 3
Multi-pathing Failover

Software

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3.0, Update 3
HP SecurePath - version: 3.0c

• Windows 2000
HP SecurePath - version: 4.0c-7

• Windows 2003
EMC PowerPath - version: 3.0.6

For information on supported HBA drivers, refer to the RAID vendor’s
documentation.

System Requirements

Note

To successfully install SNFX 1.3, the following system requirements must be met:

• S

NFX 1.3 Requirements

• Windows Memory Requirements on page 5

SNFX 1.3 Requirements

The following requirements assume that SNFX is the only application running
on your system.

For each SNFX mounted file system, these requirements must be met.

System/Component Requirement

AIX SNFX clients: A minimum of 512 MB of RAM is required.
IRIX SNFX clients: A minimum of 512 MB of RAM is required.

4 April 2006, ADIC

System/Component Requirement

HP-UX SNFX clients: A minimum of 1 GB of RAM is required.
Solaris SNFX clients: A minimum of 512 MB of RAM is required.
Linux SNFX clients: A minimum of 512 MB of RAM is required.
Windows 2000

Windows Server 2003
Windows XP

Network LAN using TCP/IP
(all clients and servers
must be interconnected)

SAN SNFX clients: An FC-HBA or equivalent SAN communication device

Client Hard Disk SNFX requires 200 MB of hard disk space for binaries, documentation,

Disk Drives SNFX only supports the file system when it is running on FC-3 SCSI

SNFX clients: A minimum of 512 MB of RAM is required.

For the SNFX metadata traffic, ADIC requires that a separate, dedicated,
switched Ethernet LAN be used.

where the storage is visible and accessible to multiple SAN clients.
SNFX does not support multiple hosts connected throug h an FC hu b

device because the resulting propagation of Loop Initialization Protocol
resets can cause data corruption.

configuration, and log files.

drives.

Windows Memory Requirements

The SNFX 1.3 release has a number of performance enhancements that enable it to better react to
changing customer load. These enhancements come with additional memory requirements. Because the
Windows operating system has unusual memory resource limitations it is sometimes necessary to adjust
StorNext memory tuning settings to provide optimal operation.

When running multiple file systems in the Windows environment the StorNext memory tuning parameters
must be adjusted or the machine will run out of memory. This can be seen is by bringing up task manager
and watching the Non-paged tag in the Kernel Memory pane in the lower right hand corner. Microsoft
warns that the maximum amount of non-paged memory consumed cannot exceed 256MB. However, the
actual amount varies depending on your configuration. For example, o n a machine with 256MB of memo ry
ADIC testing has found that non-paged memory must not exceed 96MB.

Non-paged memory is the most critical resource limitation but not the only one. For example, Microsoft
warns that paged memory consumptio n must no t exceed 470MB. Similarly, the actual amount also varies
depending on configuration.

Memory exhaustion can be observed in the following ways:

• commands failing

• messages in the system log about insufficient memory

• fsmpm process mysteriously dying

• repeated FSM reconnect attempts

• messages in the application log and cvlog.txt file about socket failures with the status code (10555)
which is ENOBUFS

• messages in the system log about ConvertExtent failed with error 20

April 2006, ADIC 5

The solution is to adjust a few parameters on the Cache Parameters tab in the SNFX control panel
(cvntclnt). These parameters control how much memory is consumed by the directory cache, the buffer
cache, and the local file cache.

As always, an understanding of the customer's wor kload aid in determining the correct values. Tuning is not
an exact science, and requires some trial-and-error to come up with values that work best in the customer's
environment.

CAUTION

The settings in the Cache Parameters tab are relevant to the selected
file system only . When running multiple file systems it is necessary to
adjust the Cache Parameters settings for EACH file system. Also, the
total amount of memory consumed is the SUM of the Cache
Parameters settings for ALL file systems.

Settings and Parameters

• Directory Cache Size - The first setting to consider is the Directory Cache Size. The default is 10
(MB). If you do not have large directories, or do not perform lots of directory scans, this number can
be reduced to 1 or 2MB. The impact will be slightly slower directory lookups in directories that are
frequently accessed. Also, in the Mount Options tab, you should set the Paged DirCache option
to allocate the specified memory from paged pool instead of the default non-paged pool.

• Buffer Cache NonPaged Pool Usage - The next parameter is the Buffer Cache NonPaged Pool
Usage; the value is in percent (%) and represents the percentage of available non-paged pool that
the buffer cache will consume. By default, this value is 75%. This should typically be set to 25 or at
most 50 for two or more file systems to avoid over-consumption of the non-paged pool. The
minimum value is 10 and the maximum value is 90. Associated with this setting are the Data Buffer
Cache Minimum and Data Buffer Cache Maximum settings. These settings specify the minimum
and maximum amount of paged plus non-paged memory (in megabytes) consumed for buffer
cache for the selected file system.

• Watermarks - The following parameters control how many file structures are cached on the client;
they are. These are controlled by the Meta-data Cache Low Water Mark, the Meta-data Cache
High Water Mark and the Meta-data Cache Max Water Mark. Each file structure is represented
internally by a data structure called the cvnode. The cvnode represents all the states about a file
or directory. The more cvnodes that there are encached on the client, the fewer trips the client has
to make over the wire to contact the FSM.

Each cvnode is approximately 1462 bytes in size and is allocated from the non-paged pool. The
cvnode cache is periodically purged so that unused entries are freed. The decision to purge the
cache is made based on the Low, High, and Max water mark values. The Low default is 1024, the
High default is 3072, and the Max default is 4096.

These values should be adjusted so that the cache does not bloat and consume more memory than
it should. These values are highly dependent on the customer's workload and access patterns.
Values of 512 for the High water mark will cause the cvnode cache to be purged when more than
512 entries are present. The cache will be purged until the low water mark is reached, for example

128. The Max water mark is for situations where memory is very tight. The normal purge algorithms
takes access time into account when determining a candidate to evict from the cache; in tight
memory situations (when there are more than the maximum entries in the cache), these constraints
are relaxed so that memory can be released. A value of 1024 in a tight memory situation should
work.

6 April 2006, ADIC

Configuring LDAP

The following information describes how to configure th e new StorNext LDAP feature in addition to outlining
recent changes to Windows configuration tools.

Using LDAP

SNFX 1.3 introduces support for Light Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP (RFC 2307). Th is feature allows
customers to use Active Directory/LDAP for mapping Windows User ID's (SIDs) to UNIX User ID/Group
ID's.

Changes to "Nobody" mapping

As with previous releases, if a Windows user cannot be mapped to a Unix ID, the user is mapped to Nobody.
SNFX 1.3 allows administrators change the value of Nobody by using the file system configuration
parameters:

UnixNobodyUidOnWindows 60003
UnixNobodyGidOnWindows 60004

These parameters are located in the file system configuration file on the server and are manually modified
by the Xsan Administrator GUI.

Changes to UNIX File & Directory Modes

When a file or directory is created on Windows, the UNIX modes are now controlled by the following file
system configuration paramet ers :

UnixDirectoryCreationModeOnWindowsDefault 0755
UnixFileCreationModeOnWindowsDefault 0644

In previous releases StorNext used per user mode masks. SNFX 1.3 allows one set of values for all users
of each file system.

Note

The default values allow more open access to Windows-created files from
UNIX systems than in previous versions. Administrators can manually change
these values in the file system configuration file on the server or use the
Windows or Web GUI.

LDAP Refresh Timeout

Due to the changes in the Windows Active Directory user mappings, services for UNIX can take up to 10
minutes to be propagated to StorNext clients.

User ID Mapping Precedence

If multiple mappings are found for a given Windows user, the following precedence takes place:

• NIS/PCNFSD - If mapping exists

• Fabricated ID's - If configured "on"

• LDAP/RFC 2307 - If defined in Active Directory

• Nobody - If no other mapping found

April 2006, ADIC 7

Navigating to the Windows File System Control Parameters pane > Authentication tab gives the
administrator the ability to disable the NIS/PCNFSD mapping on a client by client basis by checking LDAP.

Domain Server Requirements

The domain server must be at least Windows 2000 or above to support RFC 2307 mapping.

Client Requirements

Mapping is done by searching the domain server that the Windows machine is a mem ber of. The user must
be logged in under the user account owned by that domain server. If the user logs in under an account of
the client machine or another domain, the user will most likely not have a mapping.

Failover Xsan to/from non-Xsan

There is a known deficiency when failing over from a non-Xsan meta-data server (FSM) to Xsan server and
visa versa. On failover (possibly requiring a Windows client reboot), the SID to UID mapping will change if
the fabrication configurations are different. Therefore, when Xsan is involved, explicitly set the configuration
file parameter UnixIdFabricationOnWindows to be the same value on all potenti al meta-data servers.

Changes to Windows Configuration Tools

• Fields in Configuration Files - The Windows configuration tools add mo re fields to the .cfg file.
The Configuration Administrator now includes all fields when the .cfg file is saved.

• The Use Strict Feature Has Been Removed - When using the File System Control
Parameters, note that the Use Strict capability has been removed from the Authentication tab.

Resolved Issues

The following tables list resolved issues in this release of StorNext.

File System Issues

The following CRs are specific to the StorNext File System.

Operating
System

AIX 33420 n/a AIX path failover broken because device always opens first device.

CR
Number

34450 n/a AIX 5.2 clients crash simultaneously when the customers Java-

SR
Number

Description

based application is run on a CVFS-mounted file system.

34471 305956 The mount -t cvfs command issued twice under AIX mounts

the file system twice. Other file system return busy.

37503 n/a
39018 n/a On AIX, move across file systems fails.

8 April 2006, ADIC

AIX does not correctly enumerate HBAs.

Operating
System

CR
Number

SR
Number

Description

IRIX 38875 310052 On IRIX, Mmap fails for files larger 2 GB.

51662 n/a POSIX sparse file support defaults to yes in StorNext 2.7.

NOTE: This change can have a negative performance imp act. Th e
previous behavior can be achieved with an explicit deactivation of
posix-sparse-file support.

Linux 24245 221686 On Linux, license key MAC address enumeration fails with multiple

NIC's.
34919 n/a Linux ioctl call must use copyin/copyout.
35317 n/a ld command hanging SNFS file systems.

Solaris 36567 332658 Stack overflow caused client kernel panic on Solaris.

51662 n/a POSIX sparse file support defaults to yes in StorNext 2.7.

NOTE: This change can have a negative performance imp act. Th e

previous behavior can be achieved with an explicit deactivation of

posix-sparse-file support.

Windows 31240 270050 The xcopy /d command should on ly copy source files newer tha n

the destination files, but it copies all files into SNFS.
33512 299640

280228

On Windows Explorer, the Properties panel hangs and triggers

retrieve of a migrated file.
33558 299636 On Windows 2003, Portmapper exits during system startup .
33998 n/a Failed Windows IRP cancellation not handled and led to BSOD.
34114 n/a Windows BSOD: ASSERT(f_spinirq == PASSIVE_LEVEL).
34326 n/a cvfsck ASSERT failed "mapaddr != NULL" file cvfssubrs.c
34375 n/a BSOD in PurgeCvnode path.
34685 n/a DriveImage7: Unsupported IOCTLS (Windows only).
34765 n/a Windows Explorer claims Windows Recycle Bin is corrupted when

removing a directory.
35651 n/a Windows client cannot access file system after upgrade from SNFS

2.3.2B40 to 2.4.1B59 (GA).
36689 331056 Windows BSOD ASSERT failed: f_rwlck->rw_state != RW_IDLE.
37572 n/a dircache pool config button gets reset in the Windows GUI.
41454 n/a In prior releases of StorNext (2.2 through 2.5), the

buffercachemin mount option had no effect. With StorNext 2.6
and later, the option will now cause the file system to pre-allocate
blocks in the buffer cache at mount time. Also, the default value for
this option has been changed from 16 MB to 1 MB. See the
mount_cvfs man-page or Windows help file for mor e information.

43199
50946

April 2006, ADIC 9

n/a WindowsSecurity configuration default setting will be set to Yes

in a future release.

Operating
System

CR
Number

SR
Number

Description

All 18144 179324 Pathing method definition not included in

c:\cvfs\help\cvfs_config.htm file.
33490 296206 Client panicked after running cvfs stop.
33544 n/a Installation procedures needs a 64-bit operating system check.
33601 n/a Windows rename failed with fu ll pathna m e gr ea te r th an 128

characters.
33726 n/a Bad value passed to "cvdb -R" causes panic.
33747 288626 SNFS - failure to start fsmpm hangs.
33834 n/a cvntclnt fails to map drives.
34163 n/a Man page missing MaxMBPerClientReserve.
34264 311750 Windows files erroneously created with UNIX execute bits.
34666 n/a UNIX access denied for all files created by unmapped Windows

users.
34835 n/a Pinnacle Liquid Blue applications fails on SNFS.
35022 n/a Asynchronous I/O fails EOF test.
35159 n/a Support asynchronous NFS exports in SNFS 2.5.
35345 n/a 2.5 trickle writes cau se se ve re fsm cp u spik e - ord e r N squ ar ed

algorithm.
35350 n/a dm_get_fileattr returns errno 28 when move issued on remote

client, 2 if local.
35395 n/a MPI benchmark failure.
35682 n/a rcp cannot truncate a file with 444 permissions.
35961 n/a Pinnacle Liquid Blue fails certain opera tion s .
36413 n/a Permissions on cifs share re se t after boot.
36572 n/a Move fails when a symbolic link is the target file.
36762 n/a Cannot send flush intent message still exists on fast machines.
36854 340454 NFS hang due to deadlock.
36884 n/a dircache not configurable on NT and needs to use paged pool.
37049 341648 Concurrent C++ programs client opening same file on same SNF S

fail.
37178 n/a DMA versus buffered I/O imbalance.
37291 n/a Unexpected data read from sparse file holes.
37465 n/a StorageTek BladeStor is just another LSI-RAID disguise.
37574 n/a perfmon fsd read counters never active.

10 April 2006, ADIC

Operating
System

CR
Number

SR
Number

Description

All 50103 n/a In previous versions of StorNext, the modification time of a file

was not updated when a file size was explicitly changed using the

truncate(2) system call on UNIX or the _chsize() function on

Windows. With StorNext 2.7, this has been corrected and setting

the size of a file will cause the modification time of the file to be set

to the current time.
51688 n/a With StorNext 2.7, the output of the cvlabel -l command has

changed. LUNs with valid StorNext labels are now displayed as

type SNFS, rather than CVFS (as reported by previous releases).
53713 n/a • Space consumed by open unlinked files on UNIX clients is now

counted against quotas.

• Quota update after file removal is now delayed until the space
deallocation is fully completed.

51687 n/a With StorNext 2.7, the output of the cvlabel -ls command has

changed. Previous releases of StorNext may not have found the
longest serial number available for a given LUN, leading to serial
numbers appearing not to be unique among multiple LUNs on the
same RAID controller. This problem has been corrected, which
may lead to the reported serial number for a given LUN being
different between StorNext 2.6 and StorNext 2.7.

April 2006, ADIC 11

Known Issues

The following tables list known issues in this release of StorNext.

File System Issues

The following CRs are specific to the StorNext File System.

Operating
System

CR
Number

SR
Number

Description Workaround

AIX 51306 n/a Using the umount command can

cause applications to fail.

52300 n/a Due to a po tential bug in AIX ( PMR

32512,033), applications using
memory-mapped I/O may hang and
become unkillable when
unmapping a shared memory
segment. In turn, this prevents an
SNFS file system from being
unmounted.

54345 n/a Unsupported XMEM function; error

implies no space, but there is
plenty of space.

33986 n/a During a StorNext upgrade, if you

encounter a DSM failure that
resembles the following output:

SNFS UPGRADE 2.6.1(48) Status

1) Upgrade 2.6.1(48) perl
Complete

2) Upgrade 2.6.1(48) GUI
Complete

3) Upgrade 2.6.1(48) apache
Complete

4) Upgrade 2.6.1(48) DSM
Failed

Check /tmp/SNFS.install.log
log file for errors.

Do you wish to continue (Yes
or <No>)? No

Make sure that all
applications are stopped
before invoking umount.

n/a

n/a

Reboot the machine and
repeat the upgrade
process.

NOTE: This may be caused
by an inability to unmount
the file system. Check the
log for details.

IRIX 34763 308348 The cvdb -K command does not

work with IRIX.

12 April 2006, ADIC

The -K parameter is not
supported at this time.

HP-UX 38359 n/a FC cable pull does not initiate

failover.

Use the SecurePath Fibre
Channel driver.

38892 n/a Cache coherency between nodes

with applications that use mmap
can potentially see data corruption.

As of the StorNext 2.5
release date, HP-UX 11iv2
applications using mmap(2)
may lose some data under
some circumstances. If a
file is mmaped for
PROT_WRITE and another
thread or process uses
mmap(2) and then
munmap(2) on the file or
performs non-mmap I/O, for
example, read(2)/write(2),
on the same file, some of
the mmap writer's data may
be lost. With StorNext, this
lost data may also occur if
the file is modified on
another node. For more
information, contact HP ­problem # (JAGaf50701).

39987 n/a Spinlock: locker forgot to unlock. Dis able the StorNext

Quotas feature in the file
system configuration file,
see cvfs_config(4).

Linux 33536 298100 StorNext Linux clients acting as

Network File System (NFS) servers
do not provide proper cluster
filelocks to NFS clients.

Solaris 17263 n/a Recursive chmod command fails at

a certain depth on Solaris 9
machines.

35223 n/a LUNs have a maximum limit of

850 GB.

n/a

Solaris chmod, chown, and
chgrp depend on “.” and “.”
being the first two entries
returned by the readdir
command. Compile the
GNU not UNIX (GNU)
versions of the fileutils
package; GNU chmod,
chown, and chgrp do not
depend on directory entry
ordering.

To maximize support
across all platforms, set
LUNs to be no greater than
850 GB when you are using
Solaris 9 without the Big
LUN patch.

April 2006, ADIC 13

Solaris 51308 n/a Solaris NFS clients get I/O errors

when using the cp -p command.

Do not use the cp -p
command which attempts
to copy ACLS not
supported by StorNext.

52120 n/a Newly labeled disks are not usable

in SNFS on Solaris 9 or 10 until
system reboot.

Windows 14254 n/a In a Windows/UNIX environment,

using path names longer than 220
characters may cause procedures
to fail under all versions of
Microsoft Windows.

33837 n/a Readonly Directories GUI

function to be eliminated in a future
StorNext release.

34699 n/a File system does not automatically

mount after a reboot due to
GetHostByName failure.

Reboot the system.

Verify that path names are
not longer than 220
characters.

n/a

Do one of the following:

• Add the server name to
the etc\hosts file on
the Windows client.

- or -

• Type the IP address of
the machine in the
fsnameservers tab
instead of the machine
name.

37431 n/a Need to document usage of

Windows 2000 client kit for
Windows 2003.

38979
43192

n/a On a Windows client, unpack fails

with convert to lower-case enabled.

50943

40054 n/a Group Quotas usage is not being

reflected on Windows systems.

On Windows 2000, 2003,
or XP, use the Windows
2000 client kit.

Select the following settings
in the Mount Options
control panel:

• File Name Case
Insensitive

• Preserve Case

In a future StorNext
release, the following
options may be obsoleted:

• Case Sensitive

• Convert to Lower Case

• Convert to Upper Case

The StorNext Quotas
feature only supports User
quotas on Windows
systems. Group quotas are
not supported. Both user
and group quotas are
supported on StorNext
UNIX/Linux clients.

14 April 2006, ADIC

All 34784 n/a When performing a cvcp

command from a Windows client
against a file with international
characters, a “cannot find file” error
is returned.

n/a

34903 n/a Breaking an Ethernet connection

causes a disconnect that
invalidates locks (file locking).

37589 n/a The cvadmin command does not

list all file system servers. This
problem can be identified by the
following syslog message:

ERR NSS: Establish
Coordinator failed
GetHostByName ...

38785 n/a There is a limitation (OS-specific)

on the number of directories deep.

39805 n/a StorNext Quotas are not supported

in a mixed (UNIX and Windows)
environment.

n/a

Manually add entries for
each host listed in

fsnameservers file to the
/etc/hosts file.

If a customer believes it has
reached this limit (the
maximum number of
directories), then contact
ATAC for assistance.

If using StorNext Quotas,
ensure that the StorNext
environment is
homogeneous - machines
are either all UNIX
machines or all Windows
machines.

39821 n/a CvApi_AllocSpace may allocate

less space than requested.

39917
43513

n/a CvApi_PunchHole API function

succeeds without performing the
requested deallocation when a file
is concurrently open on another
StorNext client node.

Use either the fstat(2)
system call or
CvApi_CvFstat() to
determine the amount of
space actually allocated.

Close the file on the other
node and reinvoke
CvApi_PunchHole.

April 2006, ADIC 15

All 42761 n/a Unix clients can create symbolic

links in StorNext file systems that
are usable on Windows clients if
they meet the following criteria:

• The link is relative (it does not
start with a '/' character)

• The link is valid (it points to file or
directory that is visible on the
Windows client)

In particular, symbolic links to files
can be used to read or write the
target file, and symbolic links to
directories can be used as
components of pathnames.

Other operations, such as deleting,
renaming or examining properties,
may fail or have unexpected results
on Windows clients. It is strongly
recommended that these
operations be limited to Unix
clients.

Delete or rename symbolic
links only on UNIX clients.

48542 n/a In previous StorNext releases, an

error encountered when processing
the cvpaths file would result in the
entire file being ignored; the system
would then revert to its usual disk
scanning rules.

In StorNext 2 .7, errors enco untered
in the cvpaths file are logged, but
processing of the file continues. As
many entries as can be
successfully processed are used.

52929 n/a The cvlabel -ls command

reports incorrect disk serial
numbers on Xsan systems.

To force the default disk
scanning rules, remove the
cvpaths file from the
StorNext config directory.

n/a

16 April 2006, ADIC

All 53141 n/a An error message may be

generated if you have a file system
configured with one or more LUNs
that are "short-labeled", that is,
LUNs that have a raw capacity
greater than 4294967295 sectors,
but have been labeled with a
reduced capacity of 4294967295
sectors (the maximum number of
sectors supported in a LUN by
StorNext 2.6) and one or more files
are trespassing on the restricted
area of the LUN.

1 On the metadata

controller node, run the
cvfsck -t <fsname>
command to list the
names of files or
directories allocated in
the restricted area
('trespassing' files).

2 On a client machine --

which should be same
type of system (same
OS) as the client
machine that created the
data originally -- move
each of the listed files to
non-restricted areas of
the file system:

• For each trespassing file,
use the snfsdefrag
command to create a
new copy of the file. For
example: for a file called /

stornext/snfs1/
xxx, type:
snfsdefrag -m 0 /
stornext/snfs1/xxx

• If any trespassing
directories are listed,
please contact ADIC
technical support for
instructions to correct the
problem.

54392 497050 When a fullstop of the file system

services is initiated, the /etc/
init.d/cvfs fullstop script
executes a fuser -km $FSNAME,
that kills all processes with open
inodes in the file system.

n/a

April 2006, ADIC 17

Limitations

This table lists the limitations that have been discovered in this release of SNFX.

Operating System/
Component Affected

Description

IRIX SNFS uses 64-bit inode numbers. 32-bit applications (programs compiled

without 64-bit) support may experience pr ob le ms work in g with files with
inode numbers greater than 2147483648. 32-bit applications may also
encounter problems when dealing with files greater than 2TB in size, This
issue is not unique to StorNext, but may be encountered by some legacy
applications when working with SNFS on IRIX.

StorNext only supports SGI 64-bit versions of IRIX on operating systems
that use the SGI version of the QLogic QLA2200 or QLA2310 FC-HBAs.

Use the uname -aR command to determine the running version of IRIX.

• If you are using IRIX level 6.5.26, you must install the maintenance
stream of StorNext or SNFS.

On many versions of IRIX, the root crontab contains the following entry
which is used to remove old application crash dumps and temporary mail
files:

find / -local -type f '(' -name core -o -name dead.letter ')'

-atime +7 -mtime +7 -exec rm -f '{}' ';'

If StorNext file systems are mounted, they will be traversed by this find
command which can have a dramatic impact on the performance of other
applications currently using these file systems. To prevent the traversal of
StorNext file systems, modify the

find / -local '(' -type d -fstype cvfs -prune ')' -o -type f
'(' -name core -o -name dead.letter ')' -atime +7 -mtime +7 ­exec rm -f '{}' ';'

find command so it reads:

Linux On many versions of Linux, the cron system runs a nightly script called

slocate.cron that is used to build a database used by the slocate
command. If StorNext file systems are mounted, they will be traversed by
this cron job which can have a dramatic impact on the performan ce of other
applications currently using these file systems. To prevent cron from
traversing StorNext file systems, two files need to be updated. Perform
these steps:

1 Modify the

updatedb command in the /etc/cron.daily/slocate.cron file to

read:

/usr/bin/updatedb -f
"cvfs,nfs,smbfs,ncpfs,proc,devpts" -e
"/tmp,/var/tmp,/usr/tmp,/afs,/net"

NOTE: "cvfs" has been added to the exclude list.

2Add

cvfs to the PRUNEFS definition in the /etc/updatedb.conf file.

For example:

PRUNEFS="cvfs devpts NFS nfs afs proc smbfs autofs
auto iso9660"

18 April 2006, ADIC

Operating System/
Component Affected

Description

Solaris O n Sola r is, by de fa ult , the /usr/lib/fs/nfs/nfsfind script is run

nightly by the cron daemon. This script contains a

find command that

traverses any local file system that is exported (shared) via NFS. If the
running of this script is interfering with the performance of processes
accessing StorNext file systems, it can be modified to skip them. To do so,
add the following line to the

find command in the script:

'(' -type d -fstype cvfs -prune ')' -o
The final find command should look like this:
find $dir '(' -type d -fstype cvfs -prune ')' -o -type f

-name .nfs\* -mtime +7 -mount -exec rm -f {} \;

Windows Windows-based SNFS clients do not support symbolic links that point to a

file system outside of SNFS. Symbolic links are created either by a UNIX/
Linux client or by a Windows client (and are referred to as junctions).

If you are using the StorNext client software with Windows 2000, Windows
Server 2003, or Windows XP, turn off the Recycle Bin in the StorNext file
systems mapped on the Windows machine, so the file systems will work
properly.

1 On the Windows client machine, right-click the Recycle Bin icon on your

desktop and click Properties.

2 Click Global.
3 Click Configure drives independently.
4 Click Local Disk onto which you have mapped StorNext.
5 Select the Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files

immediately when deleted check box.

6 Click Apply and OK.

Windows Virus-checking software, such as McAfee Virus Scan, can severely

degrade SNFS performance. If you have anti-virus softwa re running on
your Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003/Windows XP machines, ADIC
recommends you configure the software so that it does NOT check SNFS.

All Hot re-zoning of SAN fabrics is not supported.

StorNext is incompatible with CXFS.
StorNext File System is incompatible with third-party portmappers.

April 2006, ADIC 19

Operating System/
Component Affected

Description

All With SNFX 1.3, a change has been made to the way that the Reserved

Extents performance feature affects free space reporting. In the previous
release, SNFS would reserve a certain amount of disk space which would
cause applications to receive an out of space error before the disk
capacity reached 100%.

In the current release, this reserved space is treated as allocated space.
This allows applications to perform allocations until the file system is nearly
full.

NOTE: Due to allocation rounding, applications may still

receive a premature out of space error, but
only when there are only a few megabytes of
space remaining. In the worst case, the error
will be returned when the reported remaining
space is:

(InodeExpandMax * #-of-data-stripe­groups)

One side effect of this change is that after creating a new file system, df
will show that space has been used, even though no user data has been
allocated. This amount of reserved space is determined by the following
formula:

reserved space megabytes = (MaxConnections - 1) *
MaxMBPerClientReserve * #-of-data-stripe-groups

For example:
1 TB file system, 4 data stripe groups, MaxConnections=25,

MaxMBPerClientReserve=100
After cvmkfs has been used to create the file system, df reports:
File system 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on snfs1

1073741824 9830400 1063911424 1% /snfs1

While not recommended, the Reserved Extents feature can be disabled by
applying the following setting to the Globals section of the FSM
configuration file:

MaxMBPerClientReserve 0

This will cause the file system to not reserve space, but will reduce I/O
performance in some cases.

20 April 2006, ADIC

Documentation

These documents are currently available for StorNext products:

Document Number Document Title

6-00360-06 Rev A StorNext Storage Manager and File System Installation

Guide

6-00905-04 Rev A StorNext File System Installation Guide
6-00362-04 Rev A StorNext System Administrator Guide
6-00361-09 Rev A StorNext Storage Manager Quick Reference Booklet
6-00361-10 Rev A StorNext File System Quick Reference Booklet

April 2006, ADIC 21

22 April 2006, ADIC