How to make a SPECFORMAT

oneSIS can interface to almost any conceivable power or console utility by generalizing the single point of commonality that any such utility must have: a host specification. To make use of a particular power or console utility, oneSIS needs to know the format that the utility uses to represent a single host or a group of hosts. Some power utilities operate on a single hostname. Others can operate in parallel on a range of hostnames. Others don't operate on hostnames at all, instead referencing IP addresses or particular ports on a power controller.

The oneSIS interface for power and console management can be used as long as any mapping exists between the hostname (or IP address) of a node and the resulting parameter that gets passed to the power management utility used for that host. The parameter itself could be a hostname, a port, or anything else required by the specific utility.

The hostname to parameter mapping can be defined directly in the configuration with a SPECFORMAT directive, or can be determined via more cumbersome methods involving combinations of shell commands in the POWERCMD or CONSOLECMD directives.