[Cluster-devel] When is fencing considered successful?

[David Teigland <teigland@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:12:41AM -0500, Kevin Anderson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Recently we had cluster customer where the fencing agent successfully
> powered off a node, but the script failed to power the node back on due
> to firmware changes on the fencing device.
> 
> Question is whether we should consider this a successful fence event or
> does the agent have to complete everything?   The primary purpose of the
> fencing agent is to stop the node from participating in the cluster.  In
> this case, that was successful.  But, because the power on attempt
> failed, the fence agent reported failure and the cluster hung waiting
> for a followup action.  
> 
> It would seem to me that the fence agent should report success in this
> case, and maybe post a warning message about the failure to power on.
> 
> Thoughts?

Definately