> -----Original Message-----
> From: Testbed Support for GridPP member institutes [mailto:TB-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen Burke
>
> The information system is also used by EGI management, and for them it is
> useful to know things like OS and middleware versions.
>
It's not even useful for that, because a lot of it isn't accurate.
> The fact that the
> information is present doesn't mean that an ordinary user has to do
> anything with it if they aren't interested.
>
No, but it means a site has to maintain it. And by 'maintain' I mean 'bodge it until the fairly busted checking tools stop complaining'. If anyone wants to find out the hardware configuration of Oxford's worker nodes, for example, they can ask the information system. Which will lie.
> There has always been a difficult trade-off as to how much detail about
> computing systems is relevant, I don't think there's any right answer -
>
Sure there is - the minimum necessary to actually use the service. Mainly because there'll never be any way to rely on anything that doesn't cause active breakage if it's wrong, and partly because it allows maximum flexibility in implementation. The grid has aspects in common with any large software project with multiple developers and maintainers - no-one can understand the whole thing, so you have to encapsulate a lot of the mess and abstract it away behind defined interfaces.
Ewan
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