title: What is the significance of a Mnesia Master Node in a cluster
body: <p>I am running two erlang nodes with a replicated mnesia database. Whenever I tried to start one of them while mnesia IS NOT Running on the other one, mnesia:wait_for_tables(?TABS,?TIMEOUT), would hang on the node that its called from. I need to have a structure where (if both nodes are not running), I can start working with one while the other is down and later decide to bring the other one up yet continue to work well. I need to be sure that the first node that was running has updated the later when it gets up. Does this necessarily require me to have one as the master?</p>
  
  <p>%%% Edited...........................................................................</p>
  
  <p>Oh, I've got it. The database I was using had a couple of fragmented tables. Some of the fragments had been distributed across the network for load balancing. So, Mnesia on one host would try to load them across the network and would fail since mnesia on the other one is down!</p>
  
  <p>I guess this has got nothing to do with a mnesia master node. But I still would love to understand the significance of the same because I've not used it before, yet, I always play with distributed schemas.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks again...</p>