[Gluster-users] SQLite3 on 3 node cluster FS?

Tue Mar 6 16:52:46 UTC 2018

Raghavendra,

I've commited my tests case to https://github.com/powool/gluster.git -
it's grungy, and a work in progress, but I am happy to take change
suggestions, especially if it will save folks significant time.

For the rest, I'll reply inline below...

On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 10:39 PM, Raghavendra Gowdappa
<rgowdapp at redhat.com> wrote:
> +Csaba.
>
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 2:52 AM, Paul Anderson <pha at umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Raghavendra,
>>
>> Thanks very much for your reply.
>>
>> I fixed our data corruption problem by disabling the volume
>> performance.write-behind flag as you suggested, and simultaneously
>> disabling caching in my client side mount command.
>
>
> Good to know it worked. Can you give us the output of
> # gluster volume info

[root at node-1 /]# gluster volume info

Volume Name: dockerstore
Type: Replicate
Volume ID: fb08b9f4-0784-4534-9ed3-e01ff71a0144
Status: Started
Snapshot Count: 0
Number of Bricks: 1 x 3 = 3
Transport-type: tcp
Bricks:
Brick1: 172.18.0.4:/data/glusterfs/store/dockerstore
Brick2: 172.18.0.3:/data/glusterfs/store/dockerstore
Brick3: 172.18.0.2:/data/glusterfs/store/dockerstore
Options Reconfigured:
performance.client-io-threads: off
nfs.disable: on
transport.address-family: inet
locks.mandatory-locking: optimal
performance.flush-behind: off
performance.write-behind: off

>
> We would like to debug the problem in write-behind. Some questions:
>
> 1. What version of Glusterfs are you using?

On the server nodes:

[root at node-1 /]# gluster --version
glusterfs 3.13.2
Repository revision: git://git.gluster.org/glusterfs.git

On the docker container sqlite test node:

root at b4055d8547d2:/# glusterfs --version
glusterfs 3.8.8 built on Jan 11 2017 14:07:11

I recognize that version skew could be an issue.

> 2. Were you able to figure out whether its stale data or metadata that is
> causing the issue?

I lean towards stale data based on the only real observation I have:

While debugging, I put log messages in as to when the flock() is
acquired, and when it is released. There is no instance where two
different processes ever hold the same flock()'d file. From what I
have read, the locks are considered metadata, and they appear to me to
be working, so that's why I'm inclined to think stale data is the
issue.

>
> There have been patches merged in write-behind in recent past and one in the
> works which address metadata consistency. Would like to understand whether
> you've run into any of the already identified issues.

Agreed!

Thanks,

Paul

>
> regards,
> Raghavendra
>>
>>
>> In very modest testing, the flock() case appears to me to work well -
>> before it would corrupt the db within a few transactions.
>>
>> Testing using built in sqlite3 locks is better (fcntl range locks),
>> but has some behavioral issues (probably just requires query retry
>> when the file is locked). I'll research this more, although the test
>> case is not critical to our use case.
>>
>> There are no signs of O_DIRECT use in the sqlite3 code that I can see.
>>
>> I intend to set up tests that run much longer than a few minutes, to
>> see if there are any longer term issues. Also, I want to experiment
>> with data durability by killing various gluster server nodes during
>> the tests.
>>
>> If anyone would like our test scripts, I can either tar them up and
>> email them or put them in github - either is fine with me. (they rely
>> on current builds of docker and docker-compose)
>>
>> Thanks again!!
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 11:26 AM, Raghavendra Gowdappa
>> <rgowdapp at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 8:21 PM, Paul Anderson <pha at umich.edu> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> tl;dr summary of below: flock() works, but what does it take to make
>> >> sync()/fsync() work in a 3 node GFS cluster?
>> >>
>> >> I am under the impression that POSIX flock, POSIX
>> >> fcntl(F_SETLK/F_GETLK,...), and POSIX read/write/sync/fsync are all
>> >> supported in cluster operations, such that in theory, SQLite3 should
>> >> be able to atomically lock the file (or a subset of page), modify
>> >> pages, flush the pages to gluster, then release the lock, and thus
>> >> satisfy the ACID property that SQLite3 appears to try to accomplish on
>> >> a local filesystem.
>> >>
>> >> In a test we wrote that fires off 10 simple concurrernt SQL insert,
>> >> read, update loops, we discovered that we at least need to use flock()
>> >> around the SQLite3 db connection open/update/close to protect it.
>> >>
>> >> However, that is not enough - although from testing, it looks like
>> >> flock() works as advertised across gluster mounted files, sync/fsync
>> >> don't appear to, so we end up getting corruption in the SQLite3 file
>> >> (pragma integrity_check generally will show a bunch of problems after
>> >> a short test).
>> >>
>> >> Is what we're trying to do achievable? We're testing using the docker
>> >> container gluster/gluster-centos as the three servers, with a php test
>> >> inside of php-cli using filesystem mounts. If we mount the gluster FS
>> >> via sapk/plugin-gluster into the php-cli containers using docker, we
>> >> seem to have better success sometimes, but I haven't figured out why,
>> >> yet.
>> >>
>> >> I did see that I needed to set the server volume parameter
>> >> 'performance.flush-behind off', otherwise it seems that flushes won't
>> >> block as would be needed by SQLite3.
>> >
>> >
>> > If you are relying on fsync this shouldn't matter as fsync makes sure
>> > data
>> > is synced to disk.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Does anyone have any suggestions? Any words of widsom would be much
>> >> appreciated.
>> >
>> >
>> > Can you experiment with turning on/off various performance xlators?
>> > Based on
>> > earlier issues, its likely that there is stale metadata which might be
>> > causing the issue (not necessarily improper fsync behavior). I would
>> > suggest
>> > turning off all performance xlators. You can refer [1] for a related
>> > discussion. In theory the only perf xlator relevant for fsync is
>> > write-behind and I am not aware of any issues where fsync is not
>> > working.
>> > Does glusterfs log file has any messages complaining about writes or
>> > fsync
>> > failing? Does your application use O_DIRECT? If yes, please note that
>> > you
>> > need to turn the option performance.strict-o-direct on for write-behind
>> > to
>> > honour O_DIRECT
>> >
>> > Also, is it possible to identify nature of corruption - Data or
>> > metadata?
>> > More detailed explanation will help to RCA the issue.
>> >
>> > Also, is your application running on a single mount or from multiple
>> > mounts?
>> > Can you collect strace of your application (strace -ff -T -p <pid> -o
>> > <file>)? If possible can you also collect fuse-dump using option
>> > --dump-fuse
>> > while mounting glusterfs?
>> >
>> > [1]
>> >
>> > http://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-users/2018-February/033503.html
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Paul
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Gluster-users mailing list
>> >> Gluster-users at gluster.org
>> >> http://lists.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-users
>> >
>> >
>
>