Network Recommendation

Hello,


  I am currently coding up a smart socket handling library for
libMidnightCode and it made me think about openMosix.

  Since I started using openMosix (a few years now), oM has
suffered from a Denial of Service issue whereby junk data
on its listening sockets will ultimately cause it to crash.  This
isn't good, but it also isn't what I wanted to see fixed (in this
thread).

  What stems from this issue is that users compiling different
oM versions and adding them to the same cluster will
semi-randomly result in nodes crashing nodes upon
negotiation or migration.  This seems likely to be a result of
changes in the protocol between oM versions - with the
mismatch data acting as a trigger for the DoS issue (above).

  If you applied a "Version" value to the protocol, in a static
(or at least consistent) location, then you could elect not to
communicate with incompatible nodes.  Notifying node
users of the failure (via a kernel/console message, for
example) would then help cluster builders to;

  a) avoid building clusters that appear to be highly unstable
      due to mismatched protocol versions dumping each
      other

  b) dodge unpredictable node communication (or node
      orphanages) when the "node version lockout" kicks
      in


  Just a thought. 

  I don't personally want to have to go through the pain of
implementing this type of system in my own library.  But having
seen the consequences, thru oM, I'm keen not to let my laziness
undermine the quality of the resultant applications that will
eventually depend on the lib.  Stability is just too important.


  Hope you all scored chocolate .. good luck to the Kiwi's on
their big bunny cull this weekend. 
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12265571/]




--
Ian Latter
Late night coder ..
http://midnightcode.org/



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