hang with lustre file paths

[cyrush]

See comments at the tail of this conversation

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Can recent paths be saved in settings?

[biagas]

Do you mean paths for more than opening files? Because there is a recentPaths tag in guiconfig, under FileServerList.

[markcmiller86]

So, I think this is the crux of the issue with stalled startups when Lustre is down for Barb. And, in my ~/.visit/guiconfig file anyways, the tag is recentpaths (all lower case).

I think it gets updated somewhat automagically too. I don't think you need to have done a SaveSettings to get this information to update. I think it might update each time the gui is closed..

[biagas]

I think it gets updated somewhat automagically too. I don't think you need to have done a SaveSettings to get this information to update. I think it might update each time the gui is closed..

That is not my experience. It only updates when you save settings.

[cyrush]

I tried to do save settings on LC systems and the paths don't stay.

User reports they do stay on their macOS system, but not LC like what I saw.

[biagas]

Which version of VisIt? Which LC system? because I tried on poodle using public 3.4.2, and the paths were saved in my guiconfig.

[biagas]

Another question, is this in conjunction with use of selected file list?

[cyrush]

No selected files. I was testing on tuo on the CZ.

[brugger1]

I ran VisIt 3.4.2 on rzwhippet and it saved my paths in the "Open" window, only when I saved settings.
When I use selected files, it saves my paths automatically without having to save settings.

[brugger1]

This is how the automatic saving of paths works with the "File selection" window when using selected files.

1. Every time a new directory is entered it is added to the list of "recent" paths.
2. When you press the "Ok" button to dismiss the window, it saves the "recentpaths" to the guiconfig.

It doesn't do any "stat"ing of the files in the "recentpaths" on startup that I can tell (source code inspection and strace on the the gui and mdserver). It will do a "chdir" if you select one of the directories from the "recentpaths", but this is expected and doesn't explain the "VisIt hangs when Lustre is down" issue. It will "stat" all the entries in the directory VisIt is started in at startup to determine if the entry is a file or a directory.

I'll note that Lustre is routinely down for either for OS upgrades (I see this almost weekly) or some type of issue. It seems like we would be hearing this a lot if this was still an issue. How often does this come up?

[markcmiller86]

I'll note that Lustre is routinely down for either for OS upgrades (I see this almost weekly) or some type of issue. It seems like we would be hearing this a lot if this was still an issue. How often does this come up?

Well, if its related to using Selected Files, that would reduce the chance of seeing it quite a bit.

I kinda sorta confirm your observations though regarding stat or open calls. I didn't look specifically for a readdir call though. I will remember to do that next time. I didn't see any when using Barb's guiconfig and config files to launch VisIt. The only match I found for Lustre in strace logs was something along the lines of #Ansible managed: roles/common/templates/custom_hosts_with_lustre.j2..... But that was just some of the ascii "data" that had been read from a file. It was not a file path in a stat or open call.

[brugger1]

Another interesting thing to try if we encounter a hang with VisIt starting up when Lustre is down is to run the CLI. If VisIt still hangs, I think that would eliminate the "recentpaths" as an issue, since "recentpaths" appears to be strictly a GUI thing.

[markcmiller86]

FYI...LC support staff took a look at all of Barb's dot-files...nothing hitting lustre there either.

[cyrush]

@markcmiller86 does barb also have gpfs paths? We had another user hang due to gfps issues.

[cyrush]

@brugger1 my issue was that I had two instances of visit open and I was confused about the impact of save settings. We all witnessed today at our project meeting that I was confused. We should discuss selected files implications in the future.