PVFS2TAB(5)

💖 PVFS2TAB 💖

ok so bestie, we're talking about the pvfs2tab(5) situation — yes it's a manual page in the PVFS2 Manuals collection, and no it is not boring, it's literally the little file that makes your whole PVFS2 life work 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

pvfs2tab — the tea on pvfs2 volumes ☕💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so every single program that uses PVFS2 is gonna go consult a pvfs2tab file, no cap. that's where it finds out how to turn a path name into the actual deets it needs — like which servers to hit up and what files to ask for. it's giving "phonebook but for volumes" 📞✨

and the way that programs go hunting for a pvfs2tab file? they check several places, in order, like:

• /etc/pvfs2tab — the default location of the file, the main character spot 👑
• pvfs2tab — if there's no /etc/pvfs2tab file at all, then a program will look in the current directory for a file called pvfs2tab 🏠
• PVFS2TAB_FILE environment variable — this env var overrides any system-wide or local files, periodt. programs will look for a file located at the value of the environment variable 🔥

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🎀 FORMAT 🎀

ok so the file format is similar but not identical to fstab(5) — like, cousins, not twins, iykyk. it looks like this:

<bmi_address>/<fs_name> <mountpoint> pvfs2 <options> 0 0

now let's break it down piece by piece bestie, because every field matters:

• bmi address — takes the form <protocol>://<hostspec>. <protocol> is the name of the communications protocol used by bmi — that's "gm", "tcp", or "ib". and <hostspec> is the name of any metadata server. lowkey important: this format is method-dependent. for example, a <hostspec> for the "tcp" method would look like "foo.bar.com:2344". other methods may express hosts in different ways, so don't come for me if it looks different 🌈
• <fs_name> — is the name of a PVFS file system on that server ✨
• <mountpoint> — is the virtual mountpoint used by pvfs2 clients 📍
• <options> — will generally be "default" for a standard set of options. but wait, there's more! two other options are currently available:
  • the option "flowproto=<flow_method>" can be used to specify an alternate flow protocol method 🌊
  • the option "encoding=<encoding>" can be used to select a per-file system wire encoding mechanism, and it's one of "direct", "le_bfield", or "xdr" 🔐

fr fr, get these exactly right — this file is literally how your client finds anything at all 🙈

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💀 BUGS 💀

found a bug? not the vibe. please submit bug reports to devel@lists.orangefs.org 🐛📮

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

go read these next, bestie, they're all iconic:

pvfs2-server(1), pvfs2-statfs(1), pvfs2-ping(1), pvfs2-cp(1), pvfs2-genconfig(1)

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and that's the whole page, babe 💜 this was PVFS2, dated SEPTEMBER 2003, from the PVFS2TAB(5) manual — yes she's vintage, yes she still ate, mwah 🎀💋