the inode semaphore

["Wendy Cheng" <wendy.cheng@falconstor.com>]

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We're working on a high availability experiment
project for our linux-based server and the nfsds hang 
from times to times. It is observed that the version 3 
procedure 12/13 (rmdir and remove) obtains an inode 
semaphore within fh_lock()/nfsd_unlink() but never 
releases it. Theoretically this inode is going to get 
released but what can prevent the following two cases 
that would end up hanging the nfsd ?

1. Due to slow network and/or system, the client re-
sends the same request but using a different xid. The 
nfsd that accepts the new request would be stuck in 
nfsd_unlink() waiting for the inode semaphore. 
2. A "create" immediately follows the "remove" for the 
same file. 

There is a flag called fh_locked but it is passed in 
from each individual nfs request (a local copy, not 
from dcache) that doesn't help. I also browse thru 
some file system's (say ext3) inode free code but 
can't find anywhere this semaphore gets released. 
We're still debugging our failover logic but if 
someone could confirm the above are indeed a bug (or 
explain why it will not happen) would be of great 
helps.

Or should this semaphore get "zero"ed out by file 
system (say, ext3) ? 

We're on 2.4.19 kernel.

Thanks for the help.

Wendy

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