gpfs formatted partitions fail to mount on SLES 15 SP6

This document (000021536) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 SP6
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6
IBM Storage Scale File System
General Parallel File System

Situation

After upgrading to SLE 15 SP6 gpfs formatted partitions fail to mount with errors equal or similar to:

Jul 09 09:21:12 hostname linux[6747]: Unable to mount gpfsDB filesystem: Tue Jul  9 09:21:12 AM CEST 2024: mmmount: Mounting file systems ...
Jul 09 09:21:12 hostname linux[6747]: mount: /DB: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on gpfsDB, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
Jul 09 09:21:12 hostname linux[6747]:        dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
Jul 09 09:21:12 hostname linux[6747]: mmmount: Command failed. Examine previous error messages to determine cause.

Analyzing the events using the strace command shows it fails with an invalid argument:

mount("gpfsdevice", "/mount/point", "gpfs", MS_RELATIME, "mtime") = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)

while comparing this to SLE 15 SP5 shows the mount succeeds:

mount("gpfsdevice", "/mount/point", "gpfs", MS_RELATIME, "mtime,dev=gpfs200") = 0

Resolution

Please get in touch with IBM to obtain a gpfs fix.

Cause

"dev" represents a reserved keyword for mount itself (and it is reserved for ages). As a such keyword, it is removed from the kernel mount options string, and it is converted to presence or non presence of MS_NODEV kernel mount flag.

Older versions of the parser handled flags and options separately, so it was possible to use "dev" mount flag as an option, and it was not passed to MS_NODEV, but to the kernel mount options string. No filesystem is allowed to use "dev" by itself. It is a filesystem independent mount flag.

See man page of mount(8)

FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS
...
       dev
           Interpret character or block special devices on the filesystem.

       nodev
           Do not interpret character or block special devices on the
           filesystem.

In order to address this issue the application code using "dev" as a mount option will need to get updated by the respective vendor.

Disclaimer

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Document ID:000021536
Creation Date: 23-Aug-2024
Modified Date:27-Aug-2024
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications

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