AFP/OD Round Robin oddity

[rstasel]

Hey all, got a good one for ya.

I have an xsan setup that is going to serve multiple purposes, one of which being user directory storage. So, I have a Volume mounted on two machines, call them udata1 and udata2, and a folder on that volume called Users. Both machines are set to share the folder users, and on one of the machines (udata1), I added that share to the Directory as a User Directory location.

Then, I set up DNS to do a round robin between udata1 and udata2. We’ll call that main DNS entry udata. So now, if I ping udata from several different hosts, some get a response from udata1, some from udata2. good!

I then went into WGM, and in inspector, changed the user directory mount from udata1 to udata (I changed it under mounts, and changed the record name, cn, and the afp uri under VFSOpts). Now I see the option to have my user directory on udata. Great. I set that, tell it to make my home directory, and save.

Then I try to log in to udata in the finder, it gives me udata2 (okay, that’s fine)… hmmm… it only shows the option to mount Users. So I try creating the home folder again. Nothing. Checking the volume on the servers reveals that the home directory isn’t being created.

So, what’s the scoop? Does the OD server not know how to connect to udata to create the home folder? Doesn’t the OD server just tell the AFP server to create the home directory? Is there a way I can tell the OD server to always use udata1 or udata2 to handle creation of directories, yet all users still use the round robin?

Future plans, once this is working, are to implement ipfailover, and such. So I need to get this going before I can move on to that.

Thanks!

[rstasel]

So in a slight update. It seems to be that the client (or OD Master in the case of user folder creation) doesn’t like the fact that it asks for udata, and gets a response from udata1 or udata2. I changed the mount record to be specific to udata1, and everything works. Change it back, bubkis. I can confirm that this is an issue by changing the mount to udata1, then connecting to udata2, and not having the option to mount my home directory, even though udata2 can see it just fine.

If I look at /Network/Servers on udata1 or 2, I do see an entry for udata.domain. and I can even drill down into it and see the directories that are there.

So I guess my question then is, can I somehow tell the servers to respond as udata rather than udata1 or udata2? Or convince the clients that they are allowed to “speak” as udata?

I would really like if this worked… otherwise, I’m going to have to build a linux load balancer to do things…

Thanks!

[rstasel]

To further add to the oddity….

If I am on a client, and go to “Go, Connect to Server…” and connect to udata as a user, I only get the option to connect to Users.

BUT!!

If I login to a client with that username, it works.

So, whatever the issue, it’s enough that connect to server doesn’t work, nor does creating of home directories (either within WGM or logging it without a preexisting home directory) (and yes, I checked to make sure afp:CreateHomeDir = yes), but not something that bugs a client login.

Fascinating. Will post more when I know… please feel free to give me any info you might have. cause I’m pretty well confused at this point.

[rstasel]

Okay, so here’s I think the real base of the issue.

If I login to a client with a user that does not have a home folder, a folder is created on the User share. But, it only contains Desktop and Library, the two folders necessary for a user directory. So the client is creating those, not the server.

So, what I think the problem is, is because there is no udata, only udata1 and udata2, there is no machine for the user directory template to be copied from when the folder is created, which is why “Create Home Folder Now” doesn’t work, and why the folder created on first login is “bare”.

So this isn’t an AFP issue so much as something else. But any way you slice it, it’s a problem that I’m not sure I know how to resolve, unless I create all the users with their home on udata1 or udata2, then after the fact, change them over to udata. Or, change the DNS round robin so that both udata1 and udata2 contain A records for each other.

Anyone have an opinion? It’s getting lonely talking to myself. =P

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