NIDS(5)

💖 NIDS — the static lookup table for Lustre NIDs 💖

okay bestie, so this is the man page for nids, section 5 — that's a file formats page, from the Lustre File Formats crew. Yes it's short. No it is not filler. It is literally the little address book that lets Lustre stop being confused about who's who. Let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

/etc/nids — the static lookup table for Lustre NIDs 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

The static lookup table for Lustre NIDs

that's it. that's the whole synopsis. it's giving mysterious. it's giving minimal. and honestly? iconic 🎀

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So the nids file does the matchmaking, fr fr: it maps host names to NIDs, and it maps NIDs back to host names. Both directions. A two-way street. A situationship where everyone actually knows each other's name 💅

🌸 FORMAT 🌸

First things first: comments starting with a hash (#) get ignored — they are not the moment, nobody is reading them, they're just for you 🍓

Every other line = one host. And each line carries the following info, all separated by plain old white space:

• HOSTNAME — the primary hostname of the node. Like, the name it calls itself, e.g. the output of uname -n. that's the vibe check that matters.
• PRIMARY_NID — the primary NID of the node. the main character NID 👑
• OTHER_NID ... — any additional NIDs. yes you can have extra. the whole friend group is allowed on the line 🦋

heads up: the separators here are white space, so spaces and tabs are both fine. keep your columns cute, the parser is not judging your tab-vs-spaces discourse.

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/nids — yep. the file itself. the one and only. periodt.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

here's a whole example config for a system named Tycho, copy-paste ready and exactly as the man page shows it, bestie — I am not touching a single character:

## Tycho
tycho-mds1 172.16.2.200@tcp 172.16.10.200@tcp
tycho1     172.16.2.1@tcp   172.16.10.1@tcp
tycho2     172.16.2.2@tcp   172.16.10.2@tcp
tycho3     172.16.2.3@tcp   172.16.10.3@tcp
tycho4     172.16.2.4@tcp   172.16.10.4@tcp
tycho5     172.16.2.5@tcp   172.16.10.5@tcp
tycho6     172.16.2.6@tcp   172.16.10.6@tcp
tycho7     172.16.2.7@tcp   172.16.10.7@tcp
tycho8     172.16.2.8@tcp   172.16.10.8@tcp

see how the ## Tycho line is a comment (double hash, even extra) and every real line is hostname + primary NID + one more NID? that's the whole assignment 🫶

⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

/etc/nids has been part of the lustre(7) filesystem package since release 2.3.0. so it's been here a minute. not a new girl. a legacy icon 💜

💀 SEE ALSO 💀

ngl the SEE ALSO section here is keeping it extremely lowkey — the only other manual that gets name-dropped anywhere on this page is lustre(7) (you saw it up in AVAILABILITY). go read that one next, bestie, it's the wider family 🧚

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and that's the whole page, no cap — this NIDS(5) man page comes from the Lustre crew, dated 2024-08-28, and it's filed right there in section 5 of the Lustre File Formats set. slay, stay mapped 💖✨🌸