Bug 460060

Summary:	clustat(8) truncates columnar output when stdout is not a TTY
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	John Morrissey <jwm>
Component:	rgmanager	Assignee:	Lon Hohberger <lhh>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Cluster QE <mspqa-list>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5.4	CC:	cluster-maint, edamato, jrrs, phil
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-08-28 19:23:41 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description John Morrissey 2008-08-25 20:59:12 UTC

Description of problem:
clustat(8) offers no way of obtaining untruncated columns when its stdout is not a TTY. As a result, it is impossible to obtain untruncated service names when calling clustat(8) from a script or any situation where its output is being parsed programmatically.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Latest available in RHEL5. The cluster3 master branch at:

http://sources.redhat.com/cluster/wiki/

also exhibits this behavior.

How reproducible:
Always.


From rgmanager/src/utils/clustat.c:

  34 int dimx = 80, dimy = 24, stdout_is_tty = 0;
[...]
1103         if (isatty(STDOUT_FILENO)) {
1104                 stdout_is_tty = 1;
1105                 setupterm((char *) 0, STDOUT_FILENO, (int *) 0);
1106                 dimx = tigetnum("cols");
1107                 dimy = tigetnum("lines");
1108         }

dimx is initialized to 80 columns. No code other than the above modifies dimx. Therefore, when the environment variable COLUMNS is set, its value is never honored when stdout is not going to a TTY. This causes the Service Name column to be truncated as though the output was being emitted on an 80-column terminal:

 Service Name                   Owner (Last)                   State         
 ------- ----                   ----- ------                   -----         
 service:cl01-svc01.roch.ny.exa (cl01-host01)                  disabled      
 service:cl01-svc02.roch.ny.exa (cl01-host02)                  disabled      
 service:cl01-svc03.roch.ny.exa cl01-host03                    started       
 service:cl01-svc04.roch.ny.exa cl01-host04                    started       

Ideally, columnar data would *never* be truncated when output is not going to a TTY, so programmatic callers do not have to worry about setting COLUMNS.

Comment 1 Lon Hohberger 2008-08-28 19:23:41 UTC

Use clustat -l or clustat -x

Comment 2 Phil Lobbes 2008-08-28 19:49:00 UTC

Lon, any chance you'll re-consider... it seems you offered workarounds but it would be nice to fix this so that output isn't truncated.  I don't see how that behavior is desirable or a 'feature'... but perhaps you can enlighten?

Comment 3 jared spiegel 2008-08-28 20:07:36 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> Use clustat -l or clustat -x

both outputs are nontrivially more complex to parse than the default output.

if the output is not a TTY then why ought clustat(8) assume to wield any jurisdiction over the column count of the output?  by nature, it has NO IDEA where the data is going, so it should not make any assertions.

it's clearly not a bug because the program is working precisely as designed.

thus, it is a design flaw.

if this behaviour is something that there is reason to believe other applications are already depending on (eg, the malformed/truncated output in the default output mode), it is not beyond reason to add a flag that allows the default output to do the right thing it ought to be doing already