Error: Failed to store root directory

[Rob Stites]

I am trying to start the meta server and I get the following error:

/etc/init.d/beegfs-meta start

Starting BeeGFS Meta Server: 

Error: Failed to store root directory

[BeeGFS Metadata Node Version: 2015.03-r2

Refer to the default config file (/etc/beegfs/beegfs-meta.conf)

or visit http://www.beegfs.com to find out about configuration options.]

                                                           [FAILED]

This is a fresh install.  My beegfs-meta.conf includes the following:

sysMgmtdHost                 = 192.168.1.19

storeMetaDirectory           = /mnt/beegfs/beegfs_meta

storeAllowFirstRunInit       = true

My beegfs-mgmtd.conf includes the following:

storeMgmtdDirectory      = /mnt/beegfs/beegfs_mgmtd

storeAllowFirstRunInit   = true

sysAllowNewServers       = true

sysAllowNewTargets       = true

I have following the directions verbatim several times.  Am I missing something?  I am running CentOS 6.5.

Rob

[Bernd Lietzow]

Hello!

This error message usually indicates that the directory where the
metadata server wants to put its own metadata storage does not exist or
is not writable. Is the underlying file system under /mnt/beegfs mounted
and writable? Or did you by accident mix up the mountpoint where the
beegfs itself should be mounted (which is usually /mnt/beegfs) and the
place where the undelying filesystem stores the beegfs metadata and
chunk files?

Kind regards
Bernd

[Rob Stites]

I have moved my mount point to /data with the following line in fstab

/dev/sdb1               /data                   ext4    noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier    1 2

I used the following two commands which were able to write out to the /data directory correctly:

/opt/beegfs/sbin/beegfs-setup-mgmtd -p /data/beegfs/beegfs_mgmtd

/opt/beegfs/sbin/beegfs-setup-meta -p /data/beegfs/beegfs_meta -s 2 -m 192.168.1.19

The output for my beegfs-meta.log file are as follows:

cat beegfs-meta.log

(1) Sep11 08:18:05 Main [App] >> This appears to be a new storage directory. Creating a new root dir.

(0) Sep11 08:18:05 Main [Directory (store initial metadata file)] >> Unable to store directory xattr metadata: inodes/38/51/root. Did you enable extended att?

(0) Sep11 08:18:05 Main [App] >> Failed to store root directory. Unable to proceed.

(0) Sep11 08:18:05 Main [App] >> Failed to store root directory

Looking at the error file, the configuration for the above error is enabled:

storeUseExtendedAttribs      = true

and the directory /data/beegfs/beegfs_meta/inodes/38/51 does exists and it set to writable.  I used 'chmod 777' on this directory and it made no difference.

Thanks for the help.

Rob

[Sven Breuner]

Hi Rob,

see http://www.beegfs.com/wiki/MetaServerTuning
section "Enabling ext4 Extended Attributes".

Best regards,
Sven

[Rob Stites]

Thank you.  You suggestion was spot on. 

Rob