On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > This looks less than obviously correct to me. I just meant my patch obviously fixes a bug even if you do not believe it is the bug I am encountering. I claim it is "obvious" based on: Obvious statement #1: It is a bug if a directory inode's mtime is EVER updated without invalidating the lookup cache, because that results in a stale cache that does not know it is stale and can persist indefinitely. Obvious statement #2: The current nfs_wcc_update_inode() code updates the directory inode's mtime without invalidating the lookup cache. So the current code would be wrong even if it never created a problem in practice. (Although it does create a problem in practice). > The wcc case is invoked when the ctime/mtime/.... change is known to have occurred due to a file > creation/unlink/... from this client. It is a weak cache consistency case. > > If your client is seeing ENOENT after it created the file itself, then > the problem isn't cache coherency, but a bug in the file creation code. The client did not create the file itself. The sequence of operations goes like this: 1) Client looks up non-existent file, creates negative dentry. 2) File is created by a process on the server. 3) Something causes the client to update its mtime for the directory without invalidating the dentry lookup cache. (I have not figured out exactly what, but I have "caught it in the act"; see below). 4) Client incorrectly returns ENOENT when application next attempts to access file. You may think this is the usual "multiple updates within one second" issue. That is what I thought at first, anyway. But I know it is not, for three reasons... First, my server is using XFS, which supports sub-second timestamps. Second, I instrumented nfs_update_inode() to record the inode's mtime and cache_change_attribute on function entry, then to log a message on function return if the inode is a directory whose mtime got updated without also updating cache_change_attribute. Then I reproduced my issue. My new log message appeared precisely in those runs where the issue occurred. (I also instrumented the code to follow the actual sequence of events; I can see that the faulty ENOENT is being returned because the inode's cache_change_attribute matches the stale dentry's d_time.) Third, my testing confirms that the issue disappears after I apply my patch. If the problem were the usual "multiple updates in one second", or indeed any server-side issue whatsoever, my patch could not have fixed it. Unfortunately, the only test case I have is my real-world application, which I cannot share. It takes ~30 minutes of running to reproduce every time, and it only happens on maybe 2/3 of the runs, so it has taken me over a week to track this down. I still do not know the exact sequence of operations that causes the problem; I just know it really is happening. In summary, the current code is "obviously wrong" because it violates its own invariants by potentially updating a directory's mtime without invalidating its lookup cache. And it really is happening to me in practice. My patch fixes both the potential problem (which you can see for yourself) and the actual problem (for which you have only my word). Are you unwilling to fix such a bug unless I can provide you a test case? Thanks! - Pat -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-nfs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
