[SERVER-38862] mongod --enableFreeMonitoring flag still not supported on generic Linux build Created: 05/Jan/19  Updated: 27/Oct/23  Resolved: 07/Jan/19

Status: Closed
Project: Core Server
Component/s: Build, Packaging
Affects Version/s: 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.0.5
Fix Version/s: None

Type: Bug Priority: Major - P3
Reporter: Ben Newman Assignee: Ramon Fernandez Marina
Resolution: Works as Designed Votes: 0
Labels: None
Remaining Estimate: Not Specified
Time Spent: Not Specified
Original Estimate: Not Specified

Operating System: ALL
Steps To Reproduce:

> uname -a
{{ Linux benjamn 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.39-1+deb8u2 (2017-03-07) x86_64 GNU/Linux}}
> curl http://fastdl.mongodb.org/linux/mongodb-linux-x86_64-4.0.5.tgz | tar xz
{{ % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current}}
{{ Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed}}
{{ 100 69.8M 100 69.8M 0 0 26.6M 0 0:00:02 0:00:02 -::- 26.6M}}
{{ > mongodb-linux-x86_64-4.0.5/bin/mongod --enableFreeMonitoring off}}
{{ Error parsing command line: unrecognised option '--enableFreeMonitoring'}}
{{ try 'mongodb-linux-x86_64-4.0.5/bin/mongod --help' for more information}}

Participants:

 Description   

The --enableFreeMonitoring flag was fixed in MongoDB 4.0.3 to avoid a segmentation fault, so I was hopeful that we could begin using it in Meteor to silence the banner about free monitoring whenever our developers start the Mongo shell: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-36474

Although the --enableFreeMonitoring off flag works on Mac OS, virtually all of our CircleCI integration tests began failing, because the flag seems not to be supported on Linux.

I have verified this problem using MongoDB 4.0.4 and 4.0.5, and I presume it affects 4.0.3 as well. Earlier versions suffer from the segmentation fault problem linked above.

If we are unable to disable the free monitoring advertisement, we will have to go back to starting the shell with --quiet, which is not ideal because it hides some other useful information.

I understand that you might (consciously or unconsciously) prefer for developers to see the advertising banner, but that's not the experience we at Meteor want to expose to our developers.



 Comments   
Comment by Ramon Fernandez Marina [ 07/Jan/19 ]

Although I would be glad to see the --enableFreeMonitoring behavior become more consistent across generic/SSL builds

Well, to that extent we're planning on eliminating the generic build, because they have some limitations as explained in the article, so I'd recommend you avoid depending on it and use the targeted/SSL builds.

Closing the ticket now; thanks for using MongoDB.

Regards,
Ramón.

Comment by Ben Newman [ 05/Jan/19 ]

Although I would be glad to see the --enableFreeMonitoring behavior become more consistent across generic/SSL builds, I think this ticket can be closed, since there's a clear explanation of what happened, and this commit fixes the problem on our end: https://github.com/meteor/meteor/commit/aaeb2a7c2c9bcaa1f90cec82e65b78c5353bb1dd

Thanks again for taking a look at this Ramón!

Comment by Ben Newman [ 05/Jan/19 ]

Thanks for the quick update Ramón!

I saw the banner on Mac OSX when using http://fastdl.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-ssl-x86_64-4.0.4.tgz, which is slightly different because of the SSL option. According to an old comment in our code, there's no SSL version of the generic Linux distribution (e.g. http://fastdl.mongodb.org/linux/mongodb-linux-ssl-x86_64-4.0.5.tgz), which is fine because this is just the MongoDB server that runs during local development.

Based on what you've said, I think it makes sense for us to avoid the --enableFreeMonitoring off flag for Linux, although another option would be to use the non-SSL build on all platforms.

Comment by Ramon Fernandez Marina [ 05/Jan/19 ]

Thanks for your report benjamn. It seems like you're using the generic linux build, which does not have free monitoring – so while I can confirm that using

mongod --enableFreemonitoring off

throws an error (which is expected), if I run mongod I don't get the banner in the shell when connecting – can you please provide more info on how are you seeing this?

The reason the generic tarball does not have free monitoring is that this feature has third-party library dependencies that we did not want to bundle with the tarball, so we've only include the feature in targeted builds where package managers will take care of installing the right dependencies.

I checked the Ubuntu 16.04 package and verified that one can disable free monitoring in the shell.

Thanks,
Ramón.

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