In this article Barry Mavin explains step by step how to setup a Linux HA (High Availability) cluster for the running of Recital applications on Redhat/Centos 5.3 although the general configuration should work for other linux versions with a few minor changes.
Key features of the Recital scripting language include:
What are the key feature of the Recital database?
- High performance database application scripting language
- Modern object-oriented language features
- Easy to learn, easy to use
- Fast, just-in-time compiled
- Develop desktop or web applications
- Cross-platform support
- Extensive built-in functions
- Superb built-in SQL command integration
- Navigational data access for the most demanding applications
When installing nomachine on redhat 5.3 64-bit be sure to:
- Make sure you have installed the 64-bit packages as the 32-bit ones will not work.
- add the hostname to /etc/hosts
- Check "Disable encryption of all traffic" (in configuration / advanced tab)
- add the hostname to /etc/hosts
- make sure the host IP is not specified as 127.0.0.1 line
- Uncheck "Disable encryption of all traffic" (in configuration / advanced tab)
DRBD:
DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device) forms the storage redundancy portition of a HA cluster setup. Explained in basic terms DRBD provides a means of achieving RAID 1 behavoir over a network, where whole block devices are mirrored accross the network.
To start off you will need 2 indentically sized raw drives or partitions. Many how-to's on the internet assume the use of whole drives, of course this will be better performance, but if you are simply getting familar with the technology you can repartition existing drives to allow for two eqaully sized raw partitions, one on each of the systems you will be using.
There are 3 DRBD replication modes:
• Protocol A: Write I/O is reported as completed as soon as it reached local disk and local TCP send buffer
• Protocol B: Write I/O is reported as completed as soon as it reached local disk and remote TCP buffer cache
• Protocol C: Write I/O is reported as completed as soon as it reached both local and remote disks.
If we were installing the HA cluster on a slow LAN or if the geogrphical seperation of the systems involved was great, then I recommend you opt for asyncronous mirroring (Protocol A) where the notifcation of a completed write operation occurs as soon as the local disk write is performed. This will greatly improve performance.
As we are setting up our HA cluster connected via a fast LAN, we will be using DRBD in fully syncronous mode, protocol C.
Protocol C involves the file system on the active node only being notified that the write operation was finished when the block is written to both disks of the cluster. Protocol C is the most commonly used mode of DRBD.
/etc/drbd.conf
global { usage-count yes; }
common { syncer { rate 10M; } }
resource r0 {
protocol C;
net {
max-buffers 2048;
ko-count 4;
}
on bailey {
device /dev/drbd0;
disk /dev/sda4;
address 192.168.1.125:7789;
meta-disk internal;
}
on giskard {
device /dev/drbd0;
disk /dev/sda3;
address 192.168.1.127:7789;
meta-disk internal;
}
}
drbd.conf explained:
Global section, usage-count. The DRBD project keeps statistics about the usage of DRBD versions. They do this by contacting a HTTP server each time a new DRBD version is installed on a system. This can be disabled by setting usage-count no;.
The common seciton contains configurations inhereted by all resources defined.
Setting the syncronisation rate, this is accoimplished by going to the syncer section and then assigning a value to the rate setting. The syncronisation rate refers to rate in which the data is being mirrored in the background. The best setting for the syncronsation rate is related to the speed of the network with which the DRBD systems are communicating on. 100Mbps ethernet supports around 12MBps, Giggabit ethernet somewhere around 125MBps.
in the configuration above, we have a resource defined as r0, the nodes are configured in the "on" host subsections.
"Device" configures the path of the logical block device that will be created by DRBD
"Disk" configures the block device that will be used to store the data.
"Address" configures the IP address and port number of the host that will hold this DRBD device.
"Meta-disk" configures the location where the metadata about the DRBD device will be stored.
You can set this to internal and DRBD will use the physical block device to store the information, by recording the metadata within the last sections of the disk.
Once you have created your configuration file, you must conduct the following steps on both the nodes.
Create device metadata.
$ drbdadm create-md r0
v08 Magic number not found
Writing meta data...
initialising activity log
NOT initialized bitmap
New drbd meta data block sucessfully created.
success
Attach the backing device.
$ drbdadm attach r0
Set the syncronisation parameters.
$ drbdadm syncer r0
Connect it to the peer.
$ drbdadm connect r0
Run the service.
$ service drbd start
Heartbeat:
Heartbeat provides the IP redundancy and the service HA functionailty.
On the failure of the primary node the VIP is assigned to the secondary node and the services configured to be HA are started on the secondary node.
Heartbeat configuration:
/etc/ha/ha.conf
## /etc/ha.d/ha.cf on node1
## This configuration is to be the same on both machines
## This example is made for version 2, comment out crm if using version 1
// replace the node variables with the names of your nodes.
crm no
keepalive 1
deadtime 5
warntime 3
initdead 20
bcast eth0
auto_failback yes
node bailey
node giskard
/etc/ha.d/authkeys
// The configuration below set authentication off, and encryption off for the authentication of nodes and their packets.
//Note make sure the authkeys file has the correct permisisions chmod 600
## /etc/ha.d/authkeys
auth 1
1 crc
/etc/ha.d/haresources
//192.168.1.40 is the VIP (Virtual IP) assigned to the cluster.
//the "smb" in the configuration line represents the service we wish to make HA
// /devdrbd0 represents the resource name you configured in the drbd.conf
## /etc/ha.d/haresources
## This configuration is to be the same on both nodes
bailey 192.168.1.40 drbddisk Filesystem::/dev/drbd0::/drbdData::ext3 smb
I am pleased to finally report that the Centos release of Redhats 5.3 has been built and is available for download from http://www.centos.org/
The highlights of this release can be found at the following URL: http://www.redhat.com
The main areas of interest in my opinion excluding critical secirty fixes are:
- Updated hardwaresupport support for the new Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) chips
- Beefed up virtualiseation support increasing CPU and Ram limits of Virtual machines.
- Inclusion of the fully open sourced OpenJDK. This makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 the first enterprise-ready solution with a fully open source Java stack when combined with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
For those who already have Centos 5.2 installed you can simply receive the update via Yum.
Before you do the following, check that you do not have 3rd party repo's and the Centos-testing repo enabled.
You can display the currently enabled repo's using the following command.
$ yum repolist
Then as root at the prompt type:
$ yum update
So, to create and configure Recital ODBC datasources, you need to use the Window 32 bit ODBC Data Source Administrator or Recital's own Recital Universal ODBC Manager (32-bit).
The Window 32 bit ODBC Data Source Administrator is %windir%\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe.
The Recital Universal ODBC Manager (32-bit) can be accessed from the Control Panel (icon view).
Recital is a proven and cost-effective database solution that will help reduce the cost of your database and application software infrastructure substantially. As an added benefit, Recital can run many legacy applications with little to no change as it understands FoxBASE, FoxPRO and Clipper languages as a subset of it's overall capability.
STRERROR()
Syntax
STRERROR( [ <expN> ] )Description
The STRERROR() function returns a string describing the last operating system error message. If the optional error number is specified then the related operating system error message will be returned.Example
mqdes=mqcreate("/myqueue", 2)
if (mqdes < 0)
messagebox(strerror()+",errno="+alltrim(str(error())))
return
endif
rc = mqsend(mqdes, "Test message")
if (rc < 0)
messagebox(strerror()+",errno="+alltrim(str(error())))
return
endif
mqclose(mqdes)
The following example connects to a Recital ODBC datasource, executes a query then outputs all the results from the resultset.
<?php
$sql = "select country from customers limit 10";
$conn = odbc_connect('Recital ODBC test', '?', '?');
$rs = odbc_exec($conn, $sql);
odbc_result_all($rs);
odbc_close($conn);
?>
Output:
<table><tr><th>Country</th></tr>
<tr><td>Germany </td></tr>
<tr><td>Mexico </td></tr>
<tr><td>Mexico </td></tr>
<tr><td>UK </td></tr>
<tr><td>Sweden </td></tr>
<tr><td>Germany </td></tr>
<tr><td>France </td></tr>
<tr><td>Spain </td></tr>
<tr><td>France </td></tr>
<tr><td>Canada </td></tr>
</table>
For information on installing and configuring the Recital Universal ODBC Driver and creating and modifying datasources, please see the Documentation section of this web site.
Note: Use of ? for the username and password on the local server is dependent on DB_LOCAL_LOGIN being enabled.