Re: should we make --enable-tirpc the default in current nfs-utils?

Chuck Lever
2009-06-08T17:46:32Z

On Jun 8, 2009, at 1:10 PM, Jeff Layton wrote:

> On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 13:05:26 -0400
> Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 8, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Jeff Layton wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 08:46:23 -0700
>>> "Muntz, Daniel" <Dan.Muntz@netapp.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The reason to build without it is that libtirpc is largely
>>>>> untested code (on Linux), and the nfs-utils support to use
>>>>> TI-RPC is also largely untested. I think the default config
>>>>> settings should configure a safe, known-working
>>>>> configuration, not the most advanced configuration.
>>>>>
>>>>> As much as I like the idea of wider testing, the idea that we
>>>>> happen to be testing with live users is not inviting. But I
>>>>> guess it's all we've got at this point.
>>>>
>>>> It would be nice if RH had a way of testing this with Fedora
>>>> without
>>>> making it the default in the standard nfs-utils package until
>>>> _after_
>>>> testing. Perhaps nfs-utils has evolved to the point where it could
>>>> use
>>>> a release-candidate model. Then all distros could pull an RC build
>>>> if
>>>> they want it, while production users could pull the last "stable"
>>>> release.
>>>
>>> This has very little to do with Red Hat. We can enable or disable
>>> TIRPC
>>> in our own distros without making this change upstream. The question
>>> here is whether we should make this the default now, or does it make
>>> more sense to wait until everything has been converted to TIRPC, and
>>> had IPv6 support added and *then* enable it.
>>
>> I disagree.
>>
>> The question about changing the upstream default came up because I
>> asked RH to enable this option in Fedora so we can test first. Steve
>> doesn't want Fedora to enable TI-RPC unless upstream has it enabled
>> by
>> default.
>>
>> So this is _precisely_ about why RH won't enable this in Fedora
>> first.
>
> Steve asked whether we should also make it the default. He stated that
> he would prefer that it was the upstream default first, but didn't NAK
> turning it on in fedora if we didn't make it the default there.
>
> So I disagree back :)
>
> The discussion of turning this on in Fedora brought about this
> question
> for upstream, but it's a legitimate question for upstream code
> regardless of what happens with Fedora.

I brought this up because this upstream code hasn't had wide enough
testing. In my view, enabling TI-RPC in Fedora (or in some other
development distribution) is a pre-requisite for making it the default
in upstream. As Fedora (and perhaps OpenSuSE) is the only
distribution I'm aware of that has TI-RPC, that's why we might want to
consider testing there first.

So, to answer your question, IMO enabling TI-RPC upstream now is
jumping the gun.

>>> I believe the latter option will be more disruptive. Phasing support
>>> in
>>> slowly makes sense and there's an easy "fix" for people who find
>>> they
>>> have problems with it (--disable-tirpc).

--
Chuck Lever
chuck[dot]lever[at]oracle[dot]com