spaces in Server Name cause problems

Side Note, that the Upgrade Assistant (ideally run before upgrading) does catch this.  It's more than just spaces.  An underscore will do the same thing.  NETBIOS should be max 15 Characters, only contain A-Za-z0-9, dashes and dots, and has to start and end IIRC with alphanumeric

Edited March 26, 2018 by Squid

This microsoft doc spells it out.  There are some reserved words too.   Upgrade Assistant is nice, it could also be detected in unRAIDServer.plg upgrade script, however direct edit of ident.cfg circumvents all that.  I'm thinking to put code right in /etc/rc.d/rc.M that simply removes any invalid characters found.

When a name is automatically changed corrected, perhaps add a syslog entry saying something like "Invalid host name XXX corrected to YYY" ?

If you automatically change it, the user is still going to wonder why they can't access the server with the old name. And it wouldn't necesarily be obvious since networking issues can have several causes. It was just a stroke of luck the user told us his login was for server (none) today.

6 minutes ago, trurl said:

If you automatically change it, the user is still going to wonder why they can't access the server with the old name.

Agree, especially since many won't even have or look at the console.

8 minutes ago, trurl said:

It was just a stroke of luck the user told us his login was for server (none) today.

Why when buddy originally posted his problem I asked for the diagnostics, as they also show (none), which automatically means invalid NetBIOS.  He's not the first (I'm laying claim to that fame starting with 6.5.0-rc2), won't be the last

 

I'm undecided though on whether it should automatically be changed at boot though.  I think if anywhere if you're going to change it should be during install, in big bright letters to at least inform the user that this is being changed.

1 minute ago, Squid said:

Why when buddy originally posted his problem I asked for the diagnostics, as they also show (none), which automatically means invalid NetBIOS.

Perfect example of something I wouldn't normally notice in the diagnostics, hence the other thread I started in the Bar.

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Perfect example of something I wouldn't normally notice in the diagnostics, hence the other thread I started in the Bar.

I'm hoping that people will eventually figure out that Update Assistant should be run before upgrading (and not after).  LT can only do so much to protect the user from themselves, and there's a ton of other things (mainly plugin compatibility) that I can take responsibility for that LT can't at this point in time.

I don't want to over-engineer this.  It only possibly affects a very small number of users.  But for those users the server doesn't even show up by name on their network.

You should probably consider adding this information in the release notes on every new version (and all of its rc releases) for the next eight stable releases!  That way, 99% of the users will have updated at least once during this sequence!   (And I have not doubt there will be a post from someone five years down the road who finally decided to upgrade...) 

5 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

You should probably consider adding this information in the release notes on every new version (and all of its rc releases) for the next eight stable releases!  That way, 99% of the users will have updated at least once during this sequence!   (And I have not doubt there will be a post from someone five years down the road who finally decided to upgrade...) 

Lots of users do not read release notes.

 

But if an auto-rename makes it accessible using the changed name and the user can access the GUI using IP then it would be fine if the GUI clearly indicates that the machine has a changed name - and preferably why the name change.

 

Edit: With mail support configured, it would be a nice thing to send out a mail informing the user about the name change.

Edited March 27, 2018 by pwm
Added mail note.

6 hours ago, pwm said:

Lots of users do not read release notes.

 

But, those who help out those who don't read them, do read them.  It is always helpful to have a reminder of obscure things that cause problems.

2 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

But, those who help out those who don't read them, do read them.  It is always helpful to have a reminder of obscure things that cause problems.

Of course documentation is good to have. I just want to make it clear that lots of people - every day - will manage to get themselves into issues because they do not read documentation.

 

So best is a solution where they don't have to fallback on other people. For people with notifications turned on, it would cut away a number of support threads if they get a mail telling them the new name - and informing them why the original name couldn't be used. And people who don't set up notifications will have way bigger problems ahead of them.

1 hour ago, pwm said:

And people who don't set up notifications will have way bigger problems ahead of them.

+1

1 hour ago, pwm said:

And people who don't set up notifications will have way bigger problems ahead of them.

Some way to force this would save more people than the few with invalid server names. 

30 minutes ago, trurl said:

Some way to force this would save more people than the few with invalid server names. 

 

It's a separate issue to stop more people from setting invalid names and handle people who already have invalid names.

 

Same as with location of partition for cache - unRAID can easily stop people from creating new cache drives with wrong partition alignment but the upgrade process must still as early as possible help people who already have wrong align.

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Some way to force this would save more people than the few with invalid server names. 

 

Perhaps, "Force" is a bit strong.  Setting up notification should really be a part of the standard setup procedure for unRAID.  The problem with that is that there is basically no setup procedure to start unRAID.  It will basically run from the minute it boots up. 

 

Quote

 

Getting Started with unRAID Server OS

So are you ready to get started?  Great!  You’ve come to the right place!  In this guide we will be covering how to prepare your flash device, boot the system, and configure your first array.  The entire process should take less than 15 minutes.

 

 

(I know that you don't get off that easy the first time you start up a Windows computer! And I would bet you don't with any other OS  either!)

 

Back when unRAID was a simple NAS device, this simplicity of setup may have been a nice feature but with the increased complexity of its capabilities, this overly simple approach needs to be rethought. 

 

Take a look at what the manual (From the link in the lower right corner of the GUI has to say about notifications and there is about as much information on most of the rest of the settings).

 

         http://lime-technology.com/wiki/UnRAID_6/Getting_Started#Notifications_Settings 

 

One thought would be, in a future stable release, there be a script that runs the first time it boots where the upgrading user is shown each current setup parameter with a bit of Help Text explaining what the parameter does.  If an problematic setup parameter is detected, the script would point this out and encourage the user to fix it.  In the cases where is a actually a clean install, the default setting could shown.

 

EDIT:  This is a rather simple proposal and, obviously finds a lot more input and refinement before it could (or should) be actually implemented.  

 

Edited March 27, 2018 by Frank1940

Changed Status to Solved

Changed Version to 6.5.1-rc3