[Pvfs2-developers] Re: unifying config files

[Murali Vilayannur]

Hi Sam,

> Hmm...well if the server config file isn't specified, why can't the
> server just get the hostname instead of requiring an alias?

hmm.. For one that may not work if you run multiple servers on the same machine
since their hostnames would be identical, no?

>
> Yeah I was thinking that if a server config was specified as the
> second argument to the pvfs2-server, the server would go ahead and
> use those values for endpoint, storage location, logfile, etc.

We could still keep all the old code intact and do this parsing if you
are worried that people's scripts etc would break.

>
> Definitely still interest.  I'm not sure we've come up with an
> approach yet.  I would argue a first step toward zero conf would be
> encoding/decoding the config using the lebf encoding layer.  This
> would give us a more efficient representation of the config, as well
> as make it easier to modify at runtime.

I was thinking of a very simple approach.
All machines run portmapper & support tcp/ip (especially since they
presumably also require NFS)..
How about if we write a simple RPC stub with a fixed PVFS specific
program number and export a single interface to push the config file
and aliases to all servers?
Servers startup will create a thread that binds to any available port,
registers the port, program number with portmapper and prevents any
further initialization until it gets the config file params.
We write a tool that pushes these to each server by querying the
portmapper for the port.
Pushing such values is implicitly a SIGHUP equivalent. The server
reloads/parses its config files and sets itself up. The RPC thread
continues to listen for updates on the ephemeral port in the meantime
until the server process dies..
thanks,
Murali

>
> -sam
>
> > thanks,
> > Murali
> >
> > On 6/19/07, Sam Lang <slang at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Murali,
> >>
> >> Just never got around to commit it.  My only complaint is that it
> >> doesn't allow the server to optionally take a server config file (for
> >> legacy scripts, etc.).  I think that might be hard to implement
> >> though...
> >>
> >> -sam
> >>
> >> On Jun 20, 2007, at 1:19 AM, Murali Vilayannur wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hey Sam,
> >> > Any interest in merging this patch to unify config files while
> >> > starting up pvfs2 servers?
> >> > I have reworked it against HEAD..
> >> > Relevant thread..
> >> > http://www.beowulf-underground.org/pipermail/pvfs2-developers/2007-
> >> > February/003209.html
> >> > thanks,
> >> > Murali
> >> > <unify-config-files.patch>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>