[ofa-general] FW: An alternative solution to the node name issue in OFED 1.3.1

[Dave Olson]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Hal Rosenstock wrote:

| On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 10:12 AM, John Russo <john.russo at qlogic.com> wrote:
| > Issue:  We have found that causes openibd to be started before networking
| > and therefore the NodeDescription, when returned from the SM, does not
| > always contain the hostname of the system when ibhosts is run.
| > A solution was proposed however I wanted to give an alternative that we
| > worked out in case you liked it and wanted to use it instead.
| 
| I would think setting of the NodeDescription in this manner would need
| to be done optionally, via a module parameter, with the default being
| off. Quite some time ago we had the discussion about it being a system
| admin policy/possible security issue to reveal or not reveal the
| hostname via similar mechanisms. For a similar reason, this capability
| was removed from ICMP.

That's addressed by the same mechanism that currently exists in the
openibd script.  Simply set the node_desc to something other than
the hostname.  The new behavior occurs only if the node_desc
hasn't been explictly set.

If there is strong concern that this leaves a small window in which
the hostname is exposed, it could be modified to occur only if
the node_desc is set to some well-defined string, such as __HOST__
or something of the sort.

I think a module parameter is more than is needed; if added, it
should probably default to enable, since relatively few sites are likely to
have security concerns within an IB fabric (as far as exposing
hostnames).

Dave Olson
dave.olson at qlogic.com