[glue-wg] OSG dropping GLUE?

[Paul Millar]

Hi Maria,

On 11/05/15 11:02, Maria Alandes Pradillo wrote:
>> I can't speak for anyone else.  I tried to use the info-system; the
>> problem caused some inconvenience as I needed to implement a
>> work-around.
>
> Which inconvenience?

Here's the full story.

The support period for various dCache versions (2.6.x through to 2.9.x) 
is about to run out.  I've done what I can to make this "well known"; 
however, there are still ~40% of sites running a version that will run 
out of support in less than a month.

Ultimately, this is the site's choice; however, I wanted to email the 
site admins directly to make sure they understand the implications of 
running unsupported software during RUN-2.

Using the information-system, I can discover the GlueSiteSysAdminContact 
for sites running at least one dCache instance with a version that is 
about to expire.  This should provide the information as a URI 
("mailto:<address>" format).  I found a few sites where the format was 
wrong: one where the URI was "mailto:mailto:<address>" and a couple 
where "mailto: <address>" (with a space) was published.

Both are pretty trivial to work-around, but I opened GGUS tickets to get 
the information fixed, as a courtesy to those who might use this 
information in the future.

The site that published "mailto:mailto:<address>" found and fixed the 
problem quickly.

One of the sites that published "mailto: <address>" replied quickly 
saying WONT_FIX.

The other site (publishing "mailto: <address>") investigated, but 
couldn't see any configuration that would trigger this problem.  They 
also discovered that there are other OSG sites publishing similarly 
broken URIs, so believes the problem is somehow more general and now 
doesn't know how to respond to this ticket.

> No, sites can´t publish what they want. The glue-validator is
> validating what the sites publish and sites get a GGUS ticket if what
> they publish is considered to be an error. This is done for GLUE 2
> information.

Of course, I'm in favour of the validator :-)  However, there's a 
technical issue and a deeper problem here.

The technical issue is that OSG currently publishes only GLUE 1.3, so 
the GLUE 2.0 validator will not detect any problems.

The deeper issue here is whether sites (or OSG in general) agree to fix 
problems.  If GGUS tickets describing problems are always closed with 
WONT_FIX then it doesn't matter whether the problem is discovered by an 
individual or by the validator.

HTH,

Paul.