Re: Policy wrt mail lockfile (section 4.3)
Lars Wirzenius wrote:
[replying to the list instead of privately, since this is of common
interest, IMHO :-]
>> If the protocol in the publib library has a way to get around that
>> problem, I'd be interesting in learning more about it (and, possibly,
>> dreaming up cases in which it might fail :-)
>
>I don't know if it does, but it tries. Please do find any problems.
>Here's the code:
[...]
> fndir(dir, lockname);
> fnjoin(tempname, dir, ".temp-lock");
> fd = open(tempname, O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0600);
> if (fd == -1)
> return -1;
This can create a lockfile that is never deleted. Consider the following
case:
Client code does open(tempname, O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0600);
Client kernel translates this into a NFSPROC_CREATE RPC call and sends
it out on the wire as a UDP packet.
Server receives the RPC call and executes it via doing
an open(tempname, O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0600) itself; the lockfile is created.
Server sends back the the acknowledgement of success via a UDP package.
UDP package is lost on the wire.
Client kernel receives no confirmation and re-transmits the NFSPROC_CREATE
request.
Server receives RPC call and does open(tempname, O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0600);
This call fails; server transmits back indication of failure.
Client user-space code sees call to open(tempname, O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0600)
fail and thinks that somebody else has already locked things.
Result: oops...
There is a - partial - way around this. Each RPC call is accompanied
with a unique 32-bit number, the xid. A server can cache the first
request and simply send back a "done successfully" if it sees the same
(hostname,xid) tuple again within a certain time. However, there is no
guarantee in the NFS protocol that this is indeed being done (and I
don't know wether the current Linux nfsd does indeed follow that
strategy). This will also not survive a server crash, and there is
no way to enquire wether the server does support xid caching.
--
Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet.
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.
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