• Interesting article in french from yakyakyak
• More screenshots from Jim Dalrymple

“SANLink will provide a dual 4G Fibre Channel link that can be used to connect to external Fibre Channel storage or to an Xsan network. Each adapter features full duplex FC ports that automatically detect connection speed and can operate independently at 1, 2 or 4Gb/s. SANLink is the perfect companion to connect to the new VTrak x30 Series as well as maintain compatibility with the previous generation VTrak x10 Series.”

Bringing Xsan to laptops is great, but what about having Mac Mini Servers to interface to Xsan Volumes?

Cross-posted to Xsanity

Background

The Mac OS X operating system (as well as all other unices OS) mounts filesystems in a folder. That mean that every time we plug a USB thumb drive, external hard drive or Xsan volume, it creates a folder in /Volumes using the name of the volume. This folder will serve as a pointer to the actual content of the drive.
If a drive with the same name is already plugged-in (that is, a folder with this name already exists), Mac OS X creates a new folder, appending 1.

What happens

Sometimes, the created folder isn’t removed because of an unexpected shutdown. This means that either the Volume doesn’t mount (this is usually the case with Xsan), or file paths are different, causing file offline issues.

How to solve this

• 1. Go to /Volumes (in Finder, Go > Go to folder… or CMD-SHIFT-G)
• 2. Check the contents of the ghost folder (be careful as some processes might have written some data in it)
• 3. Delete it
• 4. Reboot, replug device or remount

I usually do it in command-line, to ensure that I’m deleting an empty folder :


Last login: Mon Jan 25 07:54:49 on ttys000
Bosco:~ fti$ cd /Volumes/
Bosco:Volumes fti$ ls
Macintosh HD SANVolume 1
Bosco:Volumes fti$ rmdir SANVolume\ 1/
Bosco:Volumes fti$ sudo xsanctl mount SANVolume
Bosco:Volumes fti$


References

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2474?viewlocale=en_US

Jan 24 16:36:33 mdc1 Xsan Admin[201]: ERROR: Failover priority {\n controllerUUID = "8FBFBF76-2DC4-4918-95A0-2576B3994F64";\n enabled = 0;\n} is referring to non existing controller UUID 8FBFBF76-2DC4-4918-95A0-2576B3994F64

Background

As you may already know, sometimes things go wrong in the GUI, and the only option you have is to force quit Xsan Admin.app. While thing seem to be solved, it always leave configuration errors.
Here I removed MDC1 from Xsan to isolate an issue, promoting MACPRO6 to backup MDC for a week. But when reverting back to the original setup a week later, the MACPRO6 wasn’t happy about that. What happened is that it did revert back to client, but MDC2 didn’t write that in the conf… While this doesn’t generate any GUI error and everything seems to works normally, a lot of error are printed in cvlog.

What to do…

Locate /Library/Filesystems/Xsan/config/[VOLUME]-auxdata.plist

And remove the offending controllerUUID parameter.

<key>FailoverPriorities</key>
[snip]
<dict>
<key>controllerUUID</key>
<string>8FBFBF76-2DC4-4918-95A0-2576B3994F64</string>    
<key>enabled</key>
<false/>
</dict>

Then restart volume.

References

http://www.xsanity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=782

1. The log


19/01/10 19:40:08 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:08 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:14 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:14 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:20 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:20 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:26 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:26 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:32 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:32 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:38 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:38 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:44 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:44 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name
19/01/10 19:40:50 hwmond[917] could not convert interface name


2. Troubleshooting

3. Before

4. After


19/01/10 19:40:50 /usr/sbin/serialnumberd[268] Responding to network change notification.
19/01/10 19:40:50 /usr/sbin/serialnumberd[268] Responding to network change notification.
19/01/10 19:40:50 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: launching configuration reload thread
19/01/10 19:40:50 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: fsmpm configuration reload initiated (flags FFFFFFFF)
19/01/10 19:40:50 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: fsmpm configuration reload complete
19/01/10 19:40:50 DirectoryService[26] GSSAPI Error: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information (Server not found in Kerberos database)
19/01/10 19:40:50 DirectoryService[26] GSSAPI Error: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information (Server not found in Kerberos database)
19/01/10 19:40:50 DirectoryService[26] GSSAPI Error: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information (Server not found in Kerberos database)
19/01/10 19:40:52 /usr/sbin/serialnumberd[268] Responding to network change notification.
19/01/10 19:40:52 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: launching configuration reload thread
19/01/10 19:40:52 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: fsmpm configuration reload initiated (flags FFFFFFFF)
19/01/10 19:40:52 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: fsmpm configuration reload complete
19/01/10 19:40:52 fsmpm[227] PortMapper: fsmpm configuration reload complete
19/01/10 19:40:57 com.apple.KerberosAutoConfig[966] Kerberos configuration is up to date
19/01/10 19:40:57 com.apple.KerberosAutoConfig[966] Kerberos configuration is up to date
19/01/10 19:41:15 /usr/sbin/ocspd[968] starting

5. References


if (_SC_cfstring_to_cstring(interfaceName, ifm->ifm_name, sizeof(ifm->ifm_name), kCFStringEncodingASCII) == NULL) {
SCLog(TRUE, LOG_ERR, CFSTR("could not convert interface name"));
goto done;
}


http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/configd/configd-289.2/SystemConfiguration.fproj/LinkConfiguration.c

• “Unable to initialize OpenGL. Make sure Video Desktop is disabled.”

FCP:

• “• Pour le bon fonctionnement de Final Cut Pro, il est recommandé que votre système soit doté de 64 Mo de mémoire VRAM ; hors, il n’en dispose que de 0 Mo.”
• “• Final Cut Pro recommends that your system have 64 MB of VRAM; this system has only 0 MB of VRAM.”
• Quartz Extreme errors

Solution:  For best results, you shouldn’t use the Decklink as an extended desktop. Switch in Systeme Preferences / Decklink the “When not playing video, send :” preference to “Black” or “Last Played Frame” :

If you _really_ need the Decklink Extended desktop, make sure that :

• The primary display is connected to the first DVI output
• Video mirroring is deactivated in System Preferences / Monitors

SOURCES:

• http://blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=181
• http://blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=184

• default WAN IP = higher ethernet port = 192.168.1.100
• default LAN IP = lower ethernet port = 192.168.2.254

Note : modules (Apache+PHP, NFS, Printer…) are available on website.

Here’s the bench (on MacPro early2008 – Mac OS X 10.5.5):

• SMB = W 5.5MB/s ; R 19.9MB/s
• SMB Jumbo 4000 = W 5.7MB/s ; R 21.1MB/s
• SMB Jumbo 7000 = W 5.7MB/s ; R 23.1MB/s
• AFP = W 5.7MB/s ; R 9.4MB/s
• AFP Jumbo 4000 = W 5.9MB/s ; R 10MB/s
• Could not test NFS as I couldn’t make it work properly (Time Out)

(using AJA System Test)

SMB :

AFP:

SMB with Jumbo Frame 4000B :

SMB with Jumbo Frame 7000B:

AFP with Jumbo Frame 7000B :

• MacPro (pre-2008) -> Slot 3
• MacPro (early 2008) -> Slot 2 or 3 
• Xserve intel (pre-2008) -> Slot 1 (use KONA3X)
• Xserve intel (2008) -> Slot 2 (KONA3 only — no PCI-X)

SOURCES:

• http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona_rec_sys.htm
• http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/98/869264