rpc:call has a delay in response when calling a nodedown

[Magda Mansour]

Hello,

We are encountering the following problem :

The command below responds after a few seconds (~7 seconds)
     rpc:call(dummy_node@REDACTED, erlang, whereis, [dummy_process]).
     {badrpc,nodedown}
where dummy_host is defined in /etc/hosts but is unreachable

Adding a timeout in the fourth argument does not fasten the response of this command :
     rpc:call(dummy_node@REDACTED, erlang, whereis, [dummy_process], 1000).
     {badrpc,nodedown}

We are using OTP-R11B-5 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant
Update 8) or Ubuntu

As a work around, we were obliged to check if dummy_node@REDACTED is
part of [node()|nodes()] before calling rpc:call.

Is this delay considered as the normal behaviour of rpc:call ? Is there
another work around or an alternative function to use ?

This example seems to be dummy, but on a live production cluster, where
one node has a problem, this delay can lead to real problems.

Thank you in advance,
Magda Mansour


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