GFS2: Add a document explaining GFS2's uevents

This will be essential reading for anybody who wants to
understand how GFS2 interacts with the userland gfs_controld,
and the details of recovery.

Signed-off-by: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Bob Peterson <rpeterso@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 100 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-uevents.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/gfs2-uevents.txt
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+                              uevents and GFS2
+                             ==================
+
+During the lifetime of a GFS2 mount, a number of uevents are generated.
+This document explains what the events are and what they are used
+for (by gfs_controld in gfs2-utils).
+
+A list of GFS2 uevents
+-----------------------
+
+1. ADD
+
+The ADD event occurs at mount time. It will always be the first
+uevent generated by the newly created filesystem. If the mount
+is successful, an ONLINE uevent will follow.  If it is not successful
+then a REMOVE uevent will follow.
+
+The ADD uevent has two environment variables: SPECTATOR=[0|1]
+and RDONLY=[0|1] that specify the spectator status (a read-only mount
+with no journal assigned), and read-only (with journal assigned) status
+of the filesystem respectively.
+
+2. ONLINE
+
+The ONLINE uevent is generated after a successful mount or remount. It
+has the same environment variables as the ADD uevent. The ONLINE
+uevent, along with the two environment variables for spectator and
+RDONLY are a relatively recent addition (2.6.32-rc+) and will not
+be generated by older kernels.
+
+3. CHANGE
+
+The CHANGE uevent is used in two places. One is when reporting the
+successful mount of the filesystem by the first node (FIRSTMOUNT=Done).
+This is used as a signal by gfs_controld that it is then ok for other
+nodes in the cluster to mount the filesystem.
+
+The other CHANGE uevent is used to inform of the completion
+of journal recovery for one of the filesystems journals. It has
+two environment variables, JID= which specifies the journal id which
+has just been recovered, and RECOVERY=[Done|Failed] to indicate the
+success (or otherwise) of the operation. These uevents are generated
+for every journal recovered, whether it is during the initial mount
+process or as the result of gfs_controld requesting a specific journal
+recovery via the /sys/fs/gfs2/<fsname>/lock_module/recovery file.
+
+Because the CHANGE uevent was used (in early versions of gfs_controld)
+without checking the environment variables to discover the state, we
+cannot add any more functions to it without running the risk of
+someone using an older version of the user tools and breaking their
+cluster. For this reason the ONLINE uevent was used when adding a new
+uevent for a successful mount or remount.
+
+4. OFFLINE
+
+The OFFLINE uevent is only generated due to filesystem errors and is used
+as part of the "withdraw" mechanism. Currently this doesn't give any
+information about what the error is, which is something that needs to
+be fixed.
+
+5. REMOVE
+
+The REMOVE uevent is generated at the end of an unsuccessful mount
+or at the end of a umount of the filesystem. All REMOVE uevents will
+have been preceeded by at least an ADD uevent for the same fileystem,
+and unlike the other uevents is generated automatically by the kernel's
+kobject subsystem.
+
+
+Information common to all GFS2 uevents (uevent environment variables)
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+1. LOCKTABLE=
+
+The LOCKTABLE is a string, as supplied on the mount command
+line (locktable=) or via fstab. It is used as a filesystem label
+as well as providing the information for a lock_dlm mount to be
+able to join the cluster.
+
+2. LOCKPROTO=
+
+The LOCKPROTO is a string, and its value depends on what is set
+on the mount command line, or via fstab. It will be either
+lock_nolock or lock_dlm. In the future other lock managers
+may be supported.
+
+3. JOURNALID=
+
+If a journal is in use by the filesystem (journals are not
+assigned for spectator mounts) then this will give the
+numeric journal id in all GFS2 uevents.
+
+4. UUID=
+
+With recent versions of gfs2-utils, mkfs.gfs2 writes a UUID
+into the filesystem superblock. If it exists, this will
+be included in every uevent relating to the filesystem.
+
+
+