#1161 fqdn should be clearly display at login and command prompt
Closed None Opened 10 years ago by johannbg.

= background analysis =

Spawning several OS containers which all starting with www.<foo> or ns1.<bar> or sql.<xyz> or *. domain names has shown sever limitation in our login and command prompt where it's hard for administrators to distinguishes which server the administrator actual is working on, since our default is to show short hostname at login and command prompt ( note this applies to cloud,virtual and physical and virtual hardware as well were administrator might have multiple terminal and console and ssh session open from within their desktop ).
And that's when disaster strikes! ;)

This proposal addresses that issue by showing the full hostname at login prompt as well as to show fqdn at command prompt thus setting the default out of the box to more saner and clearer values for administrators to work with.

= implementation recommendation =

Changes to /etc/issue as proposed by Simon at the feedback request -devel changes the login prompt for users from this

{{{
Fedora release 20 (Rawhide)
Kernel 3.11.0-0.rc5.git6.1.fc20.x86_64 on an x86_64 (console)

www login:
}}}
to looking like this
( patch provided on [1] )
{{{
Fedora release 20 (Rawhide)
Kernel 3.11.0-0.rc5.git6.1.fc20.x86_64 on an x86_64 (console)
Host: www.example.com <-- fqdn added

Today is Thu Aug 22 2013 06:35:39 <-- today's date time added

login: <--- short hostname removed ( agetty --nohostname )
}}}

Removal of short hostname being shown in console,serial terminal and terminal.
( --nohostname added to agetty in the following units console-getty.service,serial-getty\@.service and getty@.service patch provided here [2] ).

show fqdn in commant prompt
( patch provided here [3] ).

{{{
[root@www ~]# becomes --> [root@www.example.com ~]#
[testuser@www ~]$ becomes --> [testuser@www.example.com ~]$
}}}

Administrators can overwrite this behaviour by adding to their users .bashrc file following
{{{
"PS1="[\u@\h \W]\$"
}}}

Since they have had no problem arguing about this changes on the feedback request thread on devel, while at the same time showing and bragging about their own .bashrc foo, they are more than capable of making that change should they not agree with it.

  1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1000139
  2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=999068
  3. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=999086

Removed today's date time from the login prompt since it got pointed out to me that the time was not being updated (why does agetty support this then? ) so it would be odd if you walk a vt100 or vt102 and other terminals were the out of time and date might being displayed to the user.

Current login prompt proposal now looks like this.

{{{
Fedora release 20 (Rawhide)
Kernel 3.11.0-0.rc5.git6.1.fc20.x86_64 on an x86_64 (console)
Host: www.example.com <-- fqdn added

login:
}}}

Does this need to be a FESCo-micromanaged decision at all?

(Yes, I know I have participated in that thread :) Still, this seems like a local UI decision individual maintainers should be ordinarily doing without FESCo, perhaps with escalation if there is no agreement.)

(Arguably a contemporary OS shouldn't have the interactive command line as a primary interaction method anyway... )

Replying to [comment:3 mitr]:

Does this need to be a FESCo-micromanaged decision at all?

(Yes, I know I have participated in that thread :) Still, this seems like a local UI decision individual maintainers should be ordinarily doing without FESCo, perhaps with escalation if there is no agreement.)

If silent equals agreement then it's already in place there is only feedback there from what 6 people.

With the exception of the today's date as in the clock being outdated when user finally set in front of console, Michal was fine with the login prompt changes but then again it was Ondrej Vasik the setup/rootfiles etc that wanted wider feedback in the first place before he would commit those change to the default bashrc.

And as I expected the command line prompt part started to spin into personal preference rather than practicality, which seems to be heading into total mutilation and out of sync with other distribution of based on Ondrej Vasik last response.

In anycase if long hostname for the command prompt wont be agreed I will be closing all the bugs I filed along with other related stuff I was trying to cleanup ( broken bash prompt for the root user after minimal install etc ) in this regard and find something else to fix in the core/baseOS there is enough stuff there to do anyway...

Replying to [comment:4 johannbg]:

Replying to [comment:3 mitr]:
With the exception of the today's date as in the clock being outdated when user finally set in front of console, Michal was fine with the login prompt changes but then again it was Ondrej Vasik the setup/rootfiles etc that wanted wider feedback in the first place before he would commit those change to the default bashrc.

Difference between login (long hostname makes sense) and PS1 prompt is in the frequency of occurence. Login prompt you see just once per session. PS1 you see once per CLI command. Having default ~50% of the 80 char terminal doesn't sound as good default to me. I have no problem with rootfiles, if the dependencies will be fine for posttrans script, it makes sense to me.

And as I expected the command line prompt part started to spin into personal preference rather than practicality, which seems to be heading into total mutilation and out of sync with other distribution of based on Ondrej Vasik last response.

No, I'm not going to change it in "out od sync with other distribution" unless there is some wider agreement on that. Actually I did some changes since I became maintainer of setup to get things more in sync with e.g. Debian. Don't worry...

As to micromanagement - I think this ticket is not only about the prompt change - this is really too specific - and there is no clear agreement how the default prompt should look like - just personal preferences. IMHO it is more about the primary focus of the Fedora and about the "SIG/spin" specific configurations/setups. For containers, this change makes sense. For common "programmer's desktop" users probably not.

Replying to [comment:5 ovasik]:

Replying to [comment:4 johannbg]:

As to micromanagement - I think this ticket is not only about the prompt change - this is really too specific - and there is no clear agreement how the default prompt should look like - just personal preferences. IMHO it is more about the primary focus of the Fedora and about the "SIG/spin" specific configurations/setups. For containers, this change makes sense. For common "programmer's desktop" users probably not.

Yes the changes I'm proposing are aimed at the cloud/virtualsation/container/serve since arguably administrator are the prime consumer of the login and command prompt. In other words it's "target audience.

For the workstation/desktop part the high-level "pretty" hostname (e.g. "My Laptop") would probably be the best fit to be consistent for the desktop/workstation environment however that makes absolutely no sense for administrators to use and is more confusing and less informative then short hostnames already are.

First, I'd like to say that I am firmly in favor of providing the FQDN at the login prompt.

I agree with Ondrej that the use of FQDN at the PS1 prompt is probably not ideal for the present-day common case of Fedora. Right now, the majority of Fedora deployments that we know about tend towards being workstation/desktop installs. We're certainly trying very hard to get Fedora deployed more in the cloud, and having a Fedora Cloud operating system is one of the three pillars of my proposal for multiple Fedora products that is currently going to the board.

I think a very strong argument could be made that changing the PS1 field by default on the Fedora Cloud product would be the right move. I think it might be less obvious for Fedora Server and I think we're largely in agreement that it wouldn't make sense for Fedora Workstation.

Replying to [comment:7 sgallagh]:

First, I'd like to say that I am firmly in favor of providing the FQDN at the login prompt.

I agree with Ondrej that the use of FQDN at the PS1 prompt is probably not ideal for the present-day common case of Fedora. Right now, the majority of Fedora deployments that we know about tend towards being workstation/desktop installs.

So you have claimed both here and in your proposoal so where can I find that data to back that claim of yours up?

We're certainly trying very hard to get Fedora deployed more in the cloud, and having a Fedora Cloud >operating system is one of the three pillars of my proposal for multiple Fedora products that is >currently going to the board.

Yes well even thou that proposal has some valid points what's being proposed forward ( atleast for now ) is not something that I see as a way forward or to improve and add contributors to our pool.

In a nutshell what's being proposed now is just more of the same.

I think a very strong argument could be made that changing the PS1 field by default on the Fedora Cloud product would be the right move. I think it might be less obvious for Fedora Server and I think we're largely in agreement that it wouldn't make sense for Fedora Workstation.

We should not start tailoring core setups directly to "products" that's even worse then the entire proposal of "products" in the first place.

Seriously aving inconsistent experience between the core/base part of the "products" is a bad bad thing and an absolute no no from my pov.

The administrative/usage experience should be the same from Embedded --> coreOS --> Container --> Cloud --> Server PM/VM --> Workstation/Desktop

For 2 meetings now you have ignored putting this on your meeting agenda and that's 2 fracking weeks of available time I could have been contributing to move this forwards so can I just get you guys to vote on this bloody ticket so I can either close those bugs or continue working on this and move it forward.

Anyone who feels discussion in ticket is done and the matter is ready to go to the next meeting can set the meeting keyword. I was assuming there was more discussion on going, but if you prefer we can discuss next week.

AGREED: fqdn should be clearly display on login prompt, but not on commandline prompt (+7,-0,0)

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