Patent ID: 7203748

Claim:
A method for facilitating correct group membership by detecting the quick restart of liveness daemons in a distributed, multimode data processing system in which nodes communicate liveness indicia in the form of heartbeat signals via adapters coupled to each node, said method comprising: experiencing at one node of a membership group a failure and a quick restart of the one node of a membership group; wherein the failure and quick restart deletes locally stored membership group information at said one node; subsequent to said failure and quick restart of the one node of a membership group, receiving a heartbeat signal at the one node from at least one other node of the membership group; responsive to receipt of the heartbeat signal at the one node, sending, from the one node to the at least one other node, a first message which includes an indication the quick restart at the one node; and determining, at the at least one other node, from said indication of the quick restart in the first message and from locally stored membership group information indicating prior membership of the one node in the membership group, the occurrence of a quick restart at said one node, and responding thereto by sending a second message from the at least one other node to another node of the membership group which indicates that said one node is to be expelled from the membership group; wherein the quick restart at the one node occurs prior to a detection of the failure by at least one other node and expulsion of the one node from the membership group due to the failure.