[HADOOP-14926] Reconsider the default value of RPC timeout and document it

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.8.1, 3.0.0-alpha3
• Component/s: common
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Yufei Gu
• Created: 03/Oct/17 20:48
• Updated: 03/Oct/17 22:15

Description

We use zero as the default value of RPC timeout, which mean we don't enforce any timeout aka infinity timeout. I think that zero means infinite is counter-intuitive and error-prone through some Java libs(e.g. Socket #setSoTimeout()) do that as well. Zero could be considered as a valid timeout value, while negative one isn't. If we use zero to represent infinite, which number could be used to represent zero timeout? I suggest use -1 as the default value to indicate infinite.
We also need to document the default value and it means infinite timeout.

Issue Links

• relates to: HADOOP-12672 RPC timeout should not override IPC ping interval