[erlang-questions] Gproc in a dynamic cluster

Mihai Balea mihai@REDACTED
Tue Aug 2 17:00:16 CEST 2011


On Aug 2, 2011, at 10:43 AM, Ulf Wiger wrote:

> 
> On 2 Aug 2011, at 16:32, Mihai Balea wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Aug 2, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Ulf Wiger wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On 1 Aug 2011, at 16:00, Ulf Wiger wrote:
>>> 
>>>> This could all be baked into the 'all' option somehow. I'll think about that.
>>> 
>>> Turns out that adding the {bcast_type, all} option did the trick.
>>> 
>>> In the HEAD version of http://github.com/esl/gproc, dynamic addition of nodes seems 
>>> to work as expected when you use the option -gproc gproc_dist all.
>>> 
>>> Let me know if it doesn't work for you.
>> 
>> Still no automatic workage, but I wasn't really expecting that.
> 
> What exactly did you try?
> 
>> Is there a way to manually prod gproc into joining another nodes after startup? The way i have it set up, nodes boot with gproc booting in global mode as a top level app. Then nodes find each other using an out of band mechanism and use net_adm:ping to connect. By glancing at gen_leader code, it appears there's no way for gen_leader to automatically be aware of newly connected nodes, so I figure there might be a way to indicate it manually.
> 
> What I tried, and what worked for me, was:
> 
> - starting node n1 with (-gproc gproc_dist all), and doing application:start(gproc)
> - starting node n2 the same way (making sure to first ping n1)
> - registering a global resource at n2, verifying that it was replicated to n1
> - starting n3
> - verifying that the global resource was visible on n3 afterwards
> 
> Basically, when a new instance of gproc joins the cluster, the current leader will broadcast an updated candidate list.
> 
> Note that the nodes must be connected before starting gproc. Gproc_dist will simply use the nodes() list, so if the nodes haven't connected first, it won't work.
> 
> Note also that gen_leader (and thus gproc) has no facility for resolving netsplits. This is a reason why you need to do it this way; otherwise, the procedure can't be easily distinguished from a netsplit.

That explains it. I'm starting gproc before connecting the nodes. 
I could delay gproc's start until the cluster is connected, but I suspect it would be easier to just switch to the built in global registry.

Still, generally speaking, what would it take to add netsplit handling to gproc? It would be nice to be able to use some of gproc advanced features. Besides, I believe the initial intention for gproc was to be a replacement for global, and it cannot fill that role until it handles netsplits.

Anyway, thank you so much for your assistance.

Best regards,
Mihai


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