Persistent sessions name limitations

[ccarouge]

Description

I've just started my first persistent session today. I tried calling it "test_199b" and got:

$ persistent-sessions start test_199b
[  1726793193.092319] [CRITICAL] [nci_launch] [client/source/launch.c:449] invalid session name: test_199b

It seems persistent session names have limitations on valid characters, it might be good to warn users about it in the instructions.

I don't know what the limitations are, it might be only alpha-numeric characters...

Close Criteria

Information in the instructions about valid characters for persistent session names.

[atteggiani]

Hi @ccarouge,

Thank you for submitting this issue.

I agree, there are some things with persistent-sessions that are not optimal.
Along with the problem you pointed out, another issue is that only the session ID gets printed out when running persistent-sessions list, but no name.
This is always very frustrating for me, because if I want to verify whether a persistent session with a specific name is running, I have to manually check in the ~/.persistent-session folder for the ID associated with the name of the session, and then check that that is the ID of the running session.

Since I don't know the exact current limitations of persistent-sessions (and I cannot find information about it on the NCI website), I would not add any information on the Hive Dos either.

But I think the persistent-sessions functionality could be improved (both on what you pointed out and on my issue), which is something we were already talking about with @penguian.
He already spoke to Ruy Yang at NCI and we might have a meeting with him to discuss these improvements.

Does it make sense to you?

[ccarouge]

Yes, it makes sense to me. I'm not sure I agree with not warning users of the limitations we already know but that's not my call.

[atteggiani]

Yes, I understand your concerns.

The issue is that I don't know what limitations on characters are in place.
What is your suggested text for a warning on the characters limitation?

[ccarouge]

I would put a warning against using any special character and using a single "word" name, CamelCase can be used to separate words. Example:

---

Persistent session names accept a limited set of characters. We recommend using only alpha-numeric characters without any space in the chosen name. CamelCase can be used to identify separate words within the name. E.g:
✅ MyTest
✅ EnsMember3
❌ My_Test
❌ my test