[env-switcher-devel] [ env-switcher-Bugs-877264 ] switcher errors cause lots of utilities to fail

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Bugs item #877264, was opened at 2004-01-14 19:17
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by jsquyres
You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=465044&aid=877264&group_id=51915

Category: env-switcher functionality
Group: None
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Fixed
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Jeremy Enos (jenos)
>Assigned to: Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)
Summary: switcher errors cause lots of utilities to fail

Initial Comment:
There are two types of errors I've seen cause problems:
*  missing module file
*  directory doesn't exist but is in path

Both of these have caused failures with common utilities 
like:
sftp
scp
rsync

Rather than ask all the utilities to change, I think env-
switcher should.


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>Comment By: Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)
Date: 2004-01-16 10:06

Message:
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I still maintain that switcher should tell you of errors on
your system rather than you having to try to figure them out
yourself (or even worse, users unexpectedly getting the
wrong version of something, or not getting it at all, and
not getting informed of it).  That's just good sysadmin. 
All the errors that you cite (sftp, scp, rsync) are easily
fixable -- fix your environment setup, and the problem goes
away.  Any sysadmin worth their salt can write a 5 line
shell script to fix the problem, even in the presence of the
warning messages from switcher (e.g., ssh over a list of
hosts and run the desired switcher command).

I added a big section to the README describing this in a bit
more detail.

Despite my feelings about this, it seems that there are
resolutely lazy sysadmins out there (lazy in the bad sense
of the word, not in the hacker/good sense of the word).  I
have not wanted to propagate bad sysadmin practices, but
since at least one user has cared enough to be very, very
persistent :-) in this matter, I have done two things:

- added a "--enable-suppress-errors" option to configure,
which will change switcher's default behavior when it
encounters behavior.  It is exactly equivalent to setting
the "announce" attribute in the global section to "none"
(i.e., running "switcher announce = none --system").  This
is done at configure time, and therefore affects the entire
switcher installation, and also does not require running a
secondary command.

- made new OSCAR RPMs with this "feature" enabled.

v1.0.11 will be released shortly.  New OSCAR RPMs will be
committed shortly.

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Comment By: Jeremy Enos (jenos)
Date: 2004-01-14 19:37

Message:
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My mistake... this feature already exists, it's just not the 
default, which I would still consider a problem.  So I guess 
this request is for a default setting to be quiet.  :)


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Comment By: Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)
Date: 2004-01-14 19:20

Message:
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I'm not sure I know what you mean here -- as I already told
you in e-mail, switcher already has the capability to turn
such messages off.  It's just not enabled by default in OSCAR.

Are you asking about something else?

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You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=465044&aid=877264&group_id=51915