iscsi-iname command is very misleading

[Oren]

Hello,

I've encountered too many cases of people thinking the iscsi-iname
command, just like ifconfig, displays the currently configured IQN,
not being aware that, in fact, it generates a new IQN.
The man page (Debian-supplied, not in open-iscsi git) describes it
best, but the --help string is absolutely misleading or even wrong.

Here's my patch, that changes the wording to something similar to the
Debian's man page:
diff --git a/utils/iscsi-iname.c b/utils/iscsi-iname.c
index 7cf0e7a..80fc1d1 100644
--- a/utils/iscsi-iname.c
+++ b/utils/iscsi-iname.c
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ main(int argc, char *argv[])
prefix = argv[1];
if (( strcmp(prefix, "-h") == 0 ) ||
( strcmp(prefix, "--help") == 0 )) {
- printf("\nDisplays the iSCSI initiator name
\n");
+ printf("\nGenerates a unique iSCSI node name
on every invocation\n"
exit(0);
} else if ( strcmp(prefix, "-p") == 0 ) {
prefix = argv[2];


Best Regards,

Oren Held
Host-side development
IBM-XIV Storage

[Mike Christie]

Thanks. Merged in commit 4136ee677385a667de70fdff223c67d4e16842fc.

[Ulrich Windl]

On 8 Nov 2009 at 15:42, Oren wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> I've encountered too many cases of people thinking the iscsi-iname

What about naming it "gen-iqn" instead (in the UNIX tradition of having a short
name preferrable over "generate-new-iSCSI-qualified-name-for-initiator")?

Ulrich

[Oren Held]

I see two independent steps which we can take:

1. RENAME: IMO that get-iqn can still be interpreted as "get current iqn". In
the SSH spirit, I'd choose iscsi-iqn-gen (like ssh-keygen)

Renaming, of course, might break 3rd party scripts who look for iscsi-iname.

2. Print to STDERR "Generating a new IQN...".
This one is not supposed to affect 3rd party scripts, which probably redirect
only the STDOUT.

--

[Ulrich Windl]

On 10 Nov 2009 at 13:09, Oren Held wrote:

>
> I see two independent steps which we can take:
>
> 1. RENAME: IMO that get-iqn can still be interpreted as "get current iqn". In
> the SSH spirit, I'd choose iscsi-iqn-gen (like ssh-keygen)
>
> Renaming, of course, might break 3rd party scripts who look for iscsi-iname.
>
> 2. Print to STDERR "Generating a new IQN...".
> This one is not supposed to affect 3rd party scripts, which probably redirect
> only the STDOUT.

In the spirit of UNIX, progress messages going to stderr are unusual, except the
process will need significant toime to complete. (MHO)

Ulrich