11.4. Creating a GFS2 filesystem

In order to create a GFS filesystem on your dual-primary DRBD resource, issue this command on (only) one (!) node (which must be Primary):

mkfs -t gfs2 -p lock_dlm -j 2 -t <cluster>:<name> /dev/<drbd-resource>

The -j option in this command refers to the number of journals to keep for GFS. This must be identical to the number of nodes in the GFS cluster; since DRBD does not support more than two nodes, the value to set here is always 2.

[Tip]Tip

With DRBD 9 it is possible to share the same disk among more than two nodes; if you want to do that, you’ll either have to specify a higher number of journals or create the journals in the live file system.

The -t option, defines the lock table name. This follows the format <cluster>:<name>, where <cluster> must match your cluster name as defined in /etc/cluster/cluster.conf. Thus, only members of that cluster will be permitted to use the filesystem. By contrast, <name> is an arbitrary file system name unique in the cluster.