perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Victor Olifer <>]

Hi Andrew, 

Thanks, it would be good if the GUI supports aliases, please let me know if the patch for this appears. 

Best, 

Victor 

From: Andrew Lake <>
Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2016 at 16:01
To: VictorO <>, "" <>
Subject: Re: [perfsonar-user] loopback address

On October 12, 2016 at 10:32:06 AM, Victor Olifer () wrote:

Hi Andrew, 

Many thanks! 

I’ve tried editing /etc/perfsonar/regulartesting.cong and it looks quite straightforward. My understanding is that if I  configure a test using the GUI I have to choose any interface in the drop-down menu but then to edit regulartesting.conf manually and after that  a test will start using the new local_interface value without the need to restart the service, is it correct? I haven’t tried it yet. 

Actually you need to restart perfsonar-regulartesting (/etc/init.d/perfsonar-regulartesting  restart), sorry for not including that in my original note. Yes though, editing by hand and then restarting the service should spawn the new test using the interface/address you specify.

Interesting, that if after a manual editing of local_interface I use the GUI again to edit something in this test, e.g. the test interval or description the GUI spoils my manual editing and removes local-interface line if I leave Default as an Interface option. So, it looks like after manual editing of regulartesting.conf I can’t use the GUI after editing this test at all.  

Yes, unfortunately the GUI will overwrite this particular manual change if you hit save.

As for non-loopback aliases, yes, normal aliases seem to be also ignored by the GUI too. I have two interfaces eth0 and eth1; eth0 has an alias eth0:1 that is up and running but it  is also not shown in the GUI, only three options are shown: Default, eth0, and eth1.  If it is a bug maybe  a loopback aliases also could be added to the list wile correcting this bug?  I run perfsonar 3.5.7 on Centos 6. 

Thanks, I have created an issue.

Thanks, 

Victor 

From: Andrew Lake <>
Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2016 at 14:39
To: VictorO <>, "" <>
Subject: Re: [perfsonar-user] loopback address

Hi,

I think the GUI intentionally leaves out the loopback interface to avoid confusion since in most cases that’s not what you want. Sounds like you have a case where you do though .  You should be able to specify it by editing the /etc/perfsonar/regulartesting.conf file and specifying the “local_interface” directive, for example:

<test>

   description     bwctl/iperf3 test

   

   local_interface lo:0

   target          host1.example

   target          host2.example

   target          host3.example

   <parameters>

       type             bwctl

       tool             iperf3

       duration         20

   </parameters>

   <schedule>

       type       regular_intervals

       interval   60

   </schedule>

</test>

Alternatively you can use “local_address” instead of local_interface and specify the IP. 

To confirm, it also sounds like interfaces like eth0:0 or similar aren’t showing up in the GUI list for you? You can obviously use the workaround above but I can’t imagine why those would be intentionally ignored, so if that is indeed the case I will file a bug.

Thanks,

Andy

On October 12, 2016 at 8:57:16 AM, Victor Olifer () wrote:

Hi,
Is it possible to use a loopback address with a public IP address assigned (as
lo:0) as an interface in the perfsonar tests? I failed to do so as a loopback
lo:0 is up, I can ping it from inside of a host but the perfsonar GUI 'Tests
configuration' doesn't show it in the drop-down Interface menu of a test. The
same happens with aliases of normal harware interfaces like eth0.

Thanks,
Victor

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