[Gluster-devel] Moratorium on new patch acceptance

Shyam srangana at redhat.com
Tue May 19 16:20:18 UTC 2015


On 05/19/2015 11:23 AM, Vijaikumar M wrote:
>
>
> On Tuesday 19 May 2015 08:36 PM, Shyam wrote:
>> On 05/19/2015 08:10 AM, Raghavendra G wrote:
>>> After discussion with Vijaykumar mallikarjuna and other inputs in this
>>> thread, we are proposing all quota tests to comply to following
>>> criteria:
>>>
>>> * use dd always with oflag=append (to make sure there are no parallel
>>> writes) and conv=fdatasync (to make sure errors, if any are delivered to
>>> application. Turning off flush-behind is optional since fdatasync acts
>>> as a barrier)
>>>
>>> OR
>>>
>>> * turn off write-behind in nfs client and glusterfs server.
>>>
>>> What do you people think is a better test scenario?
>>>
>>> Also, we don't have confirmation on the RCA that parallel writes are
>>> indeed the culprits. We are trying to reproduce the issue locally.
>>> @Shyam, it would be helpful if you can confirm the hypothesis :).
>>
>> Ummm... I thought we acknowledge that quota checks are done during the
>> WIND and updated during UNWIND, and we have io threads doing in flight
>> IOs (as well as possible IOs in io threads queue) and we have 256K
>> writes in the case mentioned. Put together, in my head this forms a
>> good RCA that we write more than needed due to the in flight IOs on
>> the brick. We need to control the in flight IOs as a resolution for
>> this from the application.
>>
>> In terms of actual proof, we would need to instrument the code and
>> check. When you say it does not fail for you, does the file stop once
>> quota is reached or is a random size greater than quota? Which itself
>> may explain or point to the RCA.
>>
>> The basic thing needed from an application is,
>> - Sync IOs, so that there aren't too many in flight IOs and the
>> application waits for each IO to complete
>> - Based on tests below if we keep block size in dd lower and use
>> oflag=sync we can achieve the same, if we use higher block sizes we
>> cannot
>>
>> Test results:
>> 1) noac:
>>   - NFS sends a COMMIT (internally translates to a flush) post each IO
>> request (NFS WRITES are still with the UNSTABLE flag)
>>   - Ensures prior IO is complete before next IO request is sent (due
>> to waiting on the COMMIT)
>>   - Fails if IO size is large, i.e in the test case being discussed I
>> changed the dd line that was failing as "TEST ! dd if=/dev/zero
>> of=$N0/$mydir/newfile_2 *bs=10M* count=1 conv=fdatasync" and this
>> fails at times, as the writes here are sent as 256k chunks to the
>> server and we still see the same behavior
>>   - noac + performance.nfs.flush-behind: off +
>> performance.flush-behind: off + performance.nfs.strict-write-ordering:
>> on + performance.strict-write-ordering: on +
>> performance.nfs.write-behind: off + performance.write-behind: off
>>     - Still see similar failures, i.e at times 10MB file is created
>> successfully in the modified dd command above
>>
>> Overall, the switch works, but not always. If we are to use this
>> variant then we need to announce that all quota tests using dd not try
>> to go beyond the quota limit set in a single IO from dd.
>>
>> 2) oflag=sync:
>>   - Exactly the same behavior as above.
>>
>> 3) Added all (and possibly the kitches sink) to the test case, as
>> attached, and still see failures,
>>   - Yes, I have made the test fail intentionally (of sorts) by using
>> 3M per dd IO and 2 IOs to go beyond the quota limit.
>>   - The intention is to demonstrate that we still get parallel IOs
>> from NFS client
>>   - The test would work if we reduce the block size per IO (reliably
>> is a border condition here, and we need specific rules like block size
>> and how many blocks before we state quota is exceeded etc.)
>>   - The test would work if we just go beyond the quota, and then check
>> a separate dd instance as being able to *not* exceed the quota. Which
>> is why I put up that patch.
>>
>> What next?
>>
> Hi Shyam,
>
> I tried running the test with dd option 'oflag=append' and didn't see
> the issue.Can you please try this option and see if it works?

Did that (in the attached script that I sent) and it still failed.

Please note:
- This dd command passes (or fails with EDQUOT)
   - dd if=/dev/zero of=$N0/$mydir/newfile_2 bs=512 count=10240 
oflag=append oflag=sync conv=fdatasync
   - We can even drop append and fdatasync, as sync sends a commit per 
block written which is better for the test and quota enforcement, 
whereas fdatasync does one in the end and sometimes fails (with larger 
block sizes, say 1M)
   - We can change bs to [512 - 256k]

- This dd command fails (or writes all the data)
   - dd if=/dev/zero of=$N0/$mydir/newfile_2 bs=3M count=2 oflag=append 
oflag=sync conv=fdatasync

The reasoning is that when we write a larger block size, NFS sends in 
multiple 256k chunks to write and then sends the commit before the next 
block. As a result if we exceed quota in the *last block* that we are 
writing, we *may* fail. If we exceed quota in the last but one block we 
will pass.

Hope this shorter version explains it better.

(VijayM is educating me on quota (over IM), and it looks like the quota 
update happens as a synctask in the background, so post the flush (NFS 
commit) we may still have a race)

Post education solution:
- Quota updates on disk xattr as a sync task, as a result if we exceeded 
quota in the n-1th block there is no guarantee that the nth block would 
fail, as the sync task may not have completed

So I think we need to do the following for the quota based tests 
(expanding on the provided patch, http://review.gluster.org/#/c/10811/ )
- First dd that exceeds quota (with either oflag=sync or conv=fdatasync 
so that we do not see any flush behind or write behind effects) to be 
done without checks
- Next check in an EXPECT_WITHIN that quota is exceeded (maybe add 
checks on the just created/appended file w.r.t its minimum size that 
would make it exceed the quota)
- Then do a further dd to a new file or append to an existing file to 
get the EDQUOT error
- Proceed with whatever the test case needs to do next

Suggestions?

>
> Thanks,
> Vijay
>
>>>
>>> regards,
>>> Raghavendra.
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Raghavendra G <raghavendra at gluster.com
>>> <mailto:raghavendra at gluster.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Jeff Darcy <jdarcy at redhat.com
>>> <mailto:jdarcy at redhat.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         > No, my suggestion was aimed at not having parallel writes.
>>> In this case quota
>>>         > won't even fail the writes with EDQUOT because of reasons
>>> explained above.
>>>         > Yes, we need to disable flush-behind along with this so
>>> that errors are
>>>         > delivered to application.
>>>
>>>         Would conv=sync help here?  That should prevent any kind of
>>>         write parallelism.
>>>
>>>
>>>     An strace of dd shows that
>>>
>>>     * fdatasync is issued only once at the end of all writes when
>>>     conv=fdatasync
>>>     * for some strange reason no fsync or fdatasync is issued at all
>>>     when conv=sync
>>>
>>>     So, using conv=fdatasync in the test cannot prevent
>>>     write-parallelism induced by write-behind. Parallelism would've been
>>>     prevented only if dd had issued fdatasync after each write or opened
>>>     the file with O_SYNC.
>>>
>>>         If it doesn't, I'd say that's a true test failure somewhere in
>>>         our stack.  A
>>>         similar possibility would be to invoke dd multiple times with
>>>         oflag=append.
>>>
>>>
>>>     Yes, appending writes curb parallelism (at least in glusterfs, but
>>>     not sure how nfs client behaves) and hence can be used  as an
>>>     alternative solution.
>>>
>>>     On a slightly unrelated note flush-behind is immaterial in this test
>>>     since fdatasync is anyways acting as a barrier.
>>>
>>>         _______________________________________________
>>>         Gluster-devel mailing list
>>> Gluster-devel at gluster.org <mailto:Gluster-devel at gluster.org>
>>> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-devel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     --
>>>     Raghavendra G
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Raghavendra G
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Gluster-devel mailing list
>>> Gluster-devel at gluster.org
>>> http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-devel
>>>
>>
>>
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>


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