Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5 - GLOBAL FILE SYSTEM Manual page 52

Chapter 3. Managing GFS
perform file system recovery with the gfs_fsck command. The GFS withdraw function is less severe
than a kernel panic, which would cause another node to fence the node.
An example of an inconsistency that would yield a GFS withdraw is an incorrect block count. When
the GFS kernel module deletes a file from a file system, it systematically removes all the data and
metadata blocks associated with that file. When it is done, it checks the block count. If the block count
is not one (meaning all that is left is the disk inode itself), that indicates a file system inconsistency
since the block count did not match the list of blocks found.
You can override the GFS withdraw function by mounting the file system with the -o errors=panic
option specified. When this option is specified, any errors that would normally cause the system to
withdraw cause the system to panic instead. This stops the node's cluster communications, which
causes the node to be fenced.
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