[Cluster-devel] cluster3 config system

[David Teigland <teigland@redhat.com>]

It seems there's been some confusion about what the config system (ccs
replacement) should be and do in cluster3.  There were just two ideas I
offered way back at the beginning:

1. Move the update mechanism outside the config system.

2. What remains is the part that reads the local cluster.conf file.
   This small and simple remainder should be merged into cman.

Another idea that emerged was,

3. Add the option to get cluster.conf from an LDAP server.

My impression, from casually following the progress, was that 2 and 3 were
largely done, but I wasn't sure what the status of 1 was.

An illustration I've often used for 1, is "manually scp cluster.conf to
all cluster nodes".  The point of the illustration is that the update
mechanism should be external to the config system.  I've always expected
that some higher level program would actually make it simpler than manual
scp.  I think it would be great if this "higher level program" were conga,
or one of conga's components.  If enough customers use conga, I really
think this should be the solution for auto-updates (manual updates via scp
would always be possible).  If too few customers use conga, then we may
need to write some new "higher level program" to do it via command line,
but it shouldn't be any more complex or less intuitive than "scp to all
nodes".

There aren't any cluster2 (RHEL5) compatibily issues here.  cluster2 and
cluster3 nodes can coexist in a cluster just fine as long as they are
using matching cluster.conf files.