I’ve been using nsradmin for the last 12 years. So when I read about a new utility, ‘jobquery’ in NetWorker 7.5, that’s designed to work in a similar way to nsradmin but query the jobs database instead of the media database, I was looking forward to giving it a go. (This was in no small part to lingering disappointment over how nsrjobsd has been practically a black box since it was introduced.)<\/p>\n
So I was rather … disappointed when I ran jobquery for the first time and it appeared to hang.<\/p>\n
Running, say:<\/p>\n
# jobquery<\/pre>\nAppeared to hang.<\/p>\n
Running, say:<\/p>\n
# jobquery -s server<\/pre>\nAlso appeared to hang.<\/p>\n
Running, say:<\/p>\n
# jobquery -s server print<\/pre>\nDidn’t return a thing.<\/p>\n
So I thought maybe this is a tool that was let out of the barn a little too soon, and even went to the point of logging a question case with EMC about it. After all, it appeared to not really work at all.<\/p>\n
It turns out I’d not anticipated that there might have been a simpler problem with jobquery<\/em>, that being … less than desirable interface design. Let’s be blunt: if you write an interactive “shell” style query interface, it should<\/em> tell the user when it’s waiting for input.<\/p>\n
The problem with the initial invocation attempts was a simple one \u2013 it wasn’t hanging, but instead, it was waiting for input without telling me<\/em> it was waiting for input. Consequently, I’m currently asking EMC to file a bug about this. I know the difference between RFEs and bugs \u2013 an RFE is a request for enhancement, or to change<\/em> something that’s there by design, but a bug is a problem with the actual implementation. Now, someone might argue that maybe this should be filed as an RFE if it was originally designed to not<\/em> show any prompt, but my take on it is that any interface that doesn’t differentiate between “waiting for input”<\/strong> and “processing\/stuck”<\/strong> is, in actuality, a buggy design.<\/p>\n
Oh, and jobquery just doesn’t like being told what to do in relation to queries on the command line, even though the man page says it will accept it.<\/p>\n
If you’ve been trying to use jobquery and not getting much satisfaction, try it again without waiting for a prompt. Once I got past the lack of prompt, I was quite excited<\/em> by the promise of jobquery \u2013 in fact, I’m hoping that a future release will actually implement the ability to even stop<\/em> jobs \u2013 e.g., kill off a single saveset, or even say, pause<\/em> a clone\/stage operation.<\/p>\n
No doubt jobquery needs some improvements, but it wasn’t quite the aborted attempt I’d been initially worried about, and you should give it a go \u2013 you’ll be pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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