stop rejecting dots in node names
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#1 stop rejecting dots in node names
I'm guessing there is a reason for why dots are prohibited in node names, but the reason escapes me. I was thinking about just asking a question on genders-users, but that list seem to be all spam. So I'm submitting a feature request with a patch instead.
We have multiple clusters in our application, and decided to make the "unique" name host.cluster, and let dns searching return the right address. So, it would be convenient for us to be able to have periods in the nodename field of the genders file. I changed the source to stop prohibiting periods, and it appears to work for our limited set of use-cases.
But clearly periods were prohibited for a reason in the original source. I was curious what I'm in danger of breaking with this change.
If the change is benign I would appreciate it if you would consider integrating the change.
Thanks.
Discussion
patch to allow periods in node names
Apology on the late reply. Sourceforge does not e-mail on tracker updates, so I wasn't aware this was here.
The reason is based on legacy usage of genders when it was first created at LLNL many years ago. Internally at LLNL, it probably still needs to be this way based on expected usage. However, I see no reason why we couldn't make it a compile option.
I've added support of a --with-non-shortened-hostnames option in configure.
Thanks; I appreciate you incorporating the change. We've long since worked around the issue, but I hope it will help others.
I do have one question though: if the option is off-by-default will it be picked up by package maintainers? If preventing dots is a LLNL only issue: perhaps the default should be switched?
I can't speak if it'll be picked up my package maintainers. I suppose if you ask them nicely, they will? ;-)
I thought of changing the default. The problem is I'm not sure how much software out there works off of the assumed "shortened hostname" and what could break due to it. At the minimum, I can see many people's environment listing "foonode" in genders, but gethostname() returns "foonode.company.com". The change could affect those scripts/systems.