The Start Method

The Start callback method of a resource type implementation is called by the RGM on a chosen cluster node to start the resource. The resource group name, the resource name, and resource type name are passed on the command line. The Start method is expected to perform the actions needed to start up a data service resource on the cluster node. Typically this involves retrieving the resource properties, locating the application specific executables and/or configuration files, and launching the application with appropriate command line arguments.

With the DSDL, the resource configuration is already retrieved by the scds_initialize() utility. The startup action for the application can be contained in a function svc_start(). Another function, svc_wait(), can be called to verify that the application actually starts. The simplified code for the Start method becomes:

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
   scds_handle_t handle;

   if (scds_initialize(&handle, argc, argv)!= SCHA_ERR_NOERR) {
   return (1);   /* Initialization Error */
   }
   if (svc_validate(handle) != 0) {
   return (1);   /* Invalid settings */
   }
   if (svc_start(handle) != 0) {
   return (1);   /* Start failed */
   }
   return (svc_wait(handle));
}

This start method implementation calls svc_validate() to validate the resource configuration. If it fails, either the resource configuration and application configuration do not match, or there is currently a problem on this cluster node with regard to the system. For example, a global file system needed by the resource may currently not be available on this cluster node. In this case, it is futile to even attempt to start the resource on this cluster node. It is better to let the RGM attempt to start the resource on a different node. Note however that the above assumes svc_validate() is sufficiently conservative (so that it checks only for resources on the cluster node that are absolutely needed by the application) or else the resource might fail to start up on all cluster nodes and thus land in START_FAILED state. See scswitch(1M) and the Sun Cluster 3.1 Data Service Planning and Administration Guide for an explanation of this state.

The svc_start() function must return 0 for a successful startup of the resource on the node. If the startup function encountered a problem, it must return non-zero. Upon failure of this function, the RGM attempts to start the resource on a different cluster node.

To leverage the DSDL as much as possible, the svc_start() function can use the scds_pmf_start() utility to start the application under the Process Management Facility (PMF). This utility also leverages the failure callback action feature of PMF (see the -a action flag in pmfadm(1M)) to implement process failure detection.