> So what happens when you check that the network is reachable before you > execute the operation, and then a network failure happens later during > the operation? You've just moved the point of failure without actually > improving the user experience.
I agree that is a possible scenario, but as far as network intermittency is concerned, probably in the 0.01% range of occurrence, if not less. The other 99.99% of the time we would discover the problem before firing a doomed install request at a dead or unreachable address. In the case you describe, we would figure out that the network *became* unreachable checking the error as you suggest. Steve -----Original Message----- From: Shawn Walker [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:38 AM To: Steve Sundstrom Cc: Ervin Yan; [email protected]; Venkatesha M.G. Subject: Re: [pkg-discuss] How to validate whether a publisher is reachable or not On 03/14/12 11:22, Steve Sundstrom wrote: > Checking before the operation would allow any script to verify > whether the publisher was reachable and exit gracefully with a > "Network is unreachable" message. This is a very realistic > scenario. Yes, however, network operations can fail for a variety of reasons and at any time so attempting to determine if failure will happen before the operation is executed is not the correct solution. The packaging system already provides appropriate error messaging for the failure cases. If that failure messaging is inadequate or needs improvement, please feel free to file a request for enhancement through the appropriate support channel. > Otherwise we get "Installing", "Failed", (figure it out) "Network is > Unreachable" and a much more unpleasant user experience. Our > methodology is to do all possible to guarantee that an action will > succeed before we attempt it. It's the same as checking whether a > packages dependencies are there instead of installing it to find out > what is missing. So what happens when you check that the network is reachable before you execute the operation, and then a network failure happens later during the operation? You've just moved the point of failure without actually improving the user experience. As I said above, the packaging system already provides the appropriate error messaging and handling for this scenario. If you feel that it needs improvement, please provide specific feedback as to how. Thanks, -Shawn _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
