Hi,

04.02.2009 21:43, mark.bergman AT uphs.upenn DOT edu wrote:
> 
> In the message dated: Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:24:41 +0100,
> The pithy ruminations from Arno Lehmann on 
> <Re: [Bacula-users] Bug / RFE> were:
> => Hi,
> => 
> => 04.02.2009 19:13, Dupree, Craig wrote:
> => > This is starting to get annoying....
> => > =
> => 
> => > Can the parts of bacula that ask for volume names not arbitrarily
> => > use atoi on them?
> => 
> => Not easily, no...
> => 
> => > Here is a good example where I want to purge a volume name, since I
> => > know now the list of volumes that I want to purge and reuse for
> => > this month's backup set:
> => > =
> => 
> => > Enter MediaId or Volume name: 000029 sql_get.c:1002 Media record
> => > MediaId=3D29 not found.
> => > =
> => 
> => > In this case, it's only a hassle because MediaId 29 doesn't exist.
> => > A worse problem occurs when the leading zeros are stripped off of a
> => > volume name, and the resulting number is a valid MediaId.
> 
> 
> Yes, I've been bitten by this several times....annoying and a bit confusing.
> 
> => 
> => The problem is that the requests accepts both MediaId or a Volume =
> => 
> => name. MediaId is always numeric, a volume name is not.
> => 
> => As long as volume names can be numeric, and there is no way to =
> => 
> => distinguish if a MediaId or a volume name is entered, I see no simle =
> => 
> => solution to the problem.
> => 
> => Actually, as most volume names today are non-numeric, I don't think =
>              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> What's the data behind that statement?

:-) I tried to avoid that question intentionally ;-)

It's what I see, both in my office and at customer sites.

Without barcodes, I label tapes with a format of e.g. "DLT-[0-9]{4}" 
and disk folumes with the pool name prepended, i.e. "Full-0001".

LTO tape labels by convention have an appended "L1" to "L4", telling 
you if it's LTO-1, -4 etc.

Others use a numbering scheme starting with a letter for the series 
and digits following it, like "A000345" for example.

At least among my customers, I don't see plain numerical tape labels 
at all, any more.

> By "most" do you mean "most customer 
> sites use non-numeric volume names" or "most pieces of media have volume 
> names 
> that are non-numeric". Though there's no data, I might agree with the first
> case. However, when I look at the ~200 bar-coded tapes on the shelf behind 
> me, 
> that's a lot of data that supports the idea that most volume names are 
> actually 
> numeric.

I admit you've got some valid data there, countering my argument. Even 
though, at customer sites, I would find some more volumes with 
non-numerical names.

> 
> Here's another way of looking at it...
> 
>       The distinction between 000029 and 29 is highly relevent for
>       computers, and much less obvious or understood for the human
>       beings who use computers.
> 
> I see it is a very bad design principle to make human beings think like 
> computers, forcing people to accomodate their work processes to satisfy a
> piece of software, rather than the other way around.

True, but look at bconsole as it is: It is really not a very 
human-centric, user-friendly tool. And it's unlikely we'll have that 
changed any time soon... a major rework towards more userfriendliness 
would probably look a lot like BAT, and fortunately, that already 
exists :-)


> => 
> => this affects enough users to make a fix an urgent thing.
> => 
> => You can, of course, post a proper feature request - preferrably along =
> => 
> => with a potential solution. A solution would have to be compatible to =
> => 
> => todays behaviour, though, as that interface is probably used by =
> => 
> => scripts; thus, requiring qoutes or any other special way to =
> => 
> => distinguish between media id and volume name when entered is probably =
> => 
> => not the best way.
> 
> 
> Yes, backward compatibilty is important, and every bug report or RFE would 
> ideally come with a proposed solution, a working patch, etc., etc.. However,
> users often identify bugs (or, in this case, a dubious design choice that 
> works 
> correctly, but should be enhanced) but cannot provide a solution.

I understand that... just my situation :-)

Still I try to make it clear how a feature request is more likely to 
be accepted and even implemented soon... I don't do this to annoy 
anyone :-)

> 
> => 
> => I could imagine some post-input checks, i.e., after the value is =
> => 
> => entered, and it's numerical only, and has leading zeros, see if a =
> => 
> => volume with that MediaId exists. If there isn't one, use the input as =
> => 
> => a volume name.
> 
> 
> That sounds like a good first description for a way to fix this.

I thought so... but Kevin brought up some other ideas. Optional quotes 
seem, to me, like the best way to go for now.

I believe a patch could be rather simple... anybody with reasonable 
C/C++ skills volunteering? In the svn tree, it's 
trunk/bacula/src/dird/ua_select.c you want to look at, and then search 
for "Enter MediaId or Volume name: " and you see where to start working.

Arno

> Mark
> 
> => 
> => I'm sure other solutions could be found...
> => 
> => Arno
> => 
> => > Craig
> => > =
> 
> 
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-- 
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de

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