Release Notes v7.2.3

The BeeGFS 7.2.3 release includes small bugfixes and QoL improvements and makes BeeGFS compatible with the newest distribution releases and kernels.

General Changes/Improvements

  • The meta target can now be bound to a specific underlying file system by setting its UUID in the meta node config file. This prevents accidentally starting the meta server with the wrong target (e.g. when the correct one is not properly mounted). When updating an older installation, the new option, storeFsUUID, needs to be manually added to the config file. It can be left empty, but to prevent data loss, it is strongly recommended to configure it with the UUID of the underlying file system. The command blkid -s UUID can be used to print all UUIDs of the mounted file systems (requires the util-linux package). Choose the correct one and set it, for example storeFsUUID=01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef.

  • BeeHive is a new package added. BeeHive will be used for data management purposes.

  • Add event log entries for open with O_RDONLY flag for the purpose of file access auditing.

Fixes

  • Meta node performance. Locks introduced in 7.2.2 introduced metadata performance degradation. Changed the exclusive lock on inode to read-write locks to improve the performance and at the same time keep the consistent behavior of the buddy mirroring feature.

Known Issues and Limitations

  • Client: Direct IO is disabled when using native mode (tuneFileCacheType=native)

  • The Metadata daemon does not work reliably on RHEL/CentOS 8 due to a problem in the libc version of RHEL/CentOS 8. The problem was fixed in RHEL/CentOS 8.1.

  • The client module might hang if the IBV device(s) used are taken offline during operation.

  • The client module does not compile on SLES 15.2 with Mellanox OFED 5.2

Supported Linux Distributions and Kernels

Packages are provided for the x86_64 architecture and the following distributions:

  • RHEL 7 and 8

  • SLES 15

  • Debian 9 and 10

  • Ubuntu 18

The following Mellanox OFED driver versions are supported: 5.3, 5.2, 5.1, 5.0, 4.9

The full integration test suite was run on CentOS 8.3, RHEL 7.9 and 8.3, SLES 15.1 and SLES 15.2 and Debian 9.11 and 10.7.

Client build testing:

  • RHEL 7.9: no OFED, OFED 4.9, 5.0, 5.2, 5.3

  • RHEL 8.3: no OFED, OFED 4.9, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3

  • SLES 15.1: no OFED, OFED 5.0

  • SLES 15.2: no OFED, OFED 5.1

  • Debian 9: no OFED

  • Debian 10: no OFED, OFED 5.2, 5.3

  • AlmaLinux: no OFED

Version Interoperability

BeeGFS v7.2.3 is compatible with BeeGFS v7.2.

Upgrading from Older Versions

To upgrade from an older version, please refer to the Upgrade Guide.