[Gluster-devel] Files erased while one brick was down in AFR returns from the afterlife

[Anand Avati]

I thought about the 'ugly' for the last hour but for every problem I could
> think of there is a solution. But it could be very complex.
>
> If you erase a subdirectory while one of the bricks is down and try to
> open
> a file inside it you would have to check the versioning of two directories
> before deciding ether to duplicate or erase the file. It would have to be
> a
> recursive algorithm that could be very costly.



This is not so much of a problem. If directory versioning check (fixing
sub-entries) is done on the lookup() of every directory then we will not
face such issues. Before a lookup()(following which open()) is done on an
entry, a lookup() will _surely_ be done on its parent directory. So if you
reach upto the level of a file, to say, open it, then lookup()'s on all its
directories will already be done, starting top -> down. So fixing problems
of directories only to its immediate-children level will work well.



The creating of files doesn't open() the dir, so you would have to add
> another call to change the version everytime something changes inside a
> dir
> (files, modes, permissions, ...).



yes, it is wrong to assume opendir() would have happened while altering
sub-entries. Ideally all checks should have to be done on a lookup(). But
lookup is an operation done VERY often and we wanted to keep lookup() lean
for performance reasons (doing self-heal involves holding locks, perform
check, perform fix optionally, unlock). Doing so much in open is reasonable
(number of open calls : number of lookup calls ~ 1:10 or worse).
Moving the sync-up to lookup() has to be done carefully to make sure
performance is not hit, and we will definitely do this in the next release.

regards,
-- 
Anand V. Avati