Should NLM resends change the xid ??

Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[NeilBrown]

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I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.

Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).

During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
non-blocking LOCK from client-B

The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
behind the UNLOCK request.

Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
handling requests:
 LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
 UNLOCK from client-A - OK
 LOCK from client-B - OK

Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
whichever one it gets first - DENIED.

So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.

I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
this problem won't occur.

Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.

Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
(assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
restricted to the range 3-20).

Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
NeilBrown

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RE: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Frank Filz]

> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol, but
I
> recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
> 
> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B makes
a
> non-blocking lock request for that region.
> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread on the
> server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure causing a
> kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such allocations never
fail,
> they just block until they can be served).
> 
> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases the
lock -
> the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the non-blocking LOCK
> from client-B
> 
> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
NLM
> on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up behind
> the UNLOCK request.
> 
> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
> handling requests:
>  LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>  UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>  LOCK from client-B - OK
> 
> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
whichever
> one it gets first - DENIED.
> 
> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a lock,
but
> the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
> 
> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each comes
> from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process this
problem
> won't occur.
> 
> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
easily fill
> up and cannot provide a guarantee.
> 
> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
very
> least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is based
on
> nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is restricted to the
> range 3-20).
> 
> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure that
> we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.

That sounds like a good solution to me. Since the requests are non-blocking,
each request should be considered separate from the others.

Frank


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Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Tom Talpey]

On 3/28/2016 12:04 PM, Frank Filz wrote:
>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol, but
> I
>> recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
>>
>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B makes
> a
>> non-blocking lock request for that region.
>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread on the
>> server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure causing a
>> kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such allocations never
> fail,
>> they just block until they can be served).
>>
>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases the
> lock -
>> the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the non-blocking LOCK
>> from client-B
>>
>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
> NLM
>> on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up behind
>> the UNLOCK request.
>>
>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
>> handling requests:
>>   LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>>   UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>>   LOCK from client-B - OK
>>
>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
> whichever
>> one it gets first - DENIED.
>>
>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a lock,
> but
>> the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
>>
>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
>> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
>> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each comes
>> from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process this
> problem
>> won't occur.
>>
>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
> easily fill
>> up and cannot provide a guarantee.
>>
>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
> very
>> least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is based
> on
>> nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is restricted to the
>> range 3-20).
>>
>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure that
>> we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>
> That sounds like a good solution to me. Since the requests are non-blocking,
> each request should be considered separate from the others.

I totally disagree. To issue a new XID contradicts the entire notion of
"retransmit". It will badly break any hope of idempotency.

To me, there are two issues here:
1) The client should not be retransmitting on an unbroken connection.
2) The server should have a reply cache.

If both of those were true, this problem would not occur.

That said, if client B were to *drop the connection* and then *reissue*
the lock with a new XID, there would be a chance of things working
as desired.

But this would still leave many existing NLM issues on the table. It's
a pipe dream that NLM (and NSM) will truly support correct locking
semantics in the face of transient errors.

Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[NeilBrown]

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On Tue, Mar 29 2016, Tom Talpey wrote:

> On 3/28/2016 12:04 PM, Frank Filz wrote:
>>>
>>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure that
>>> we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>>
>> That sounds like a good solution to me. Since the requests are non-blocking,
>> each request should be considered separate from the others.
>
> I totally disagree. To issue a new XID contradicts the entire notion of
> "retransmit". It will badly break any hope of idempotency.
>
> To me, there are two issues here:
> 1) The client should not be retransmitting on an unbroken connection.

Do you mean by that that it shouldn't retransmit, or that it should
break the connection?
The first would help in my case, but is a fairly substantial change to
the protocol.  I'm not at all certain the second would help.

> 2) The server should have a reply cache.

As I said, I think a reply cache would make problems less common, but
unless it is of unlimited size, it cannot guarantee anything.

>
> If both of those were true, this problem would not occur.
>
> That said, if client B were to *drop the connection* and then *reissue*
> the lock with a new XID, there would be a chance of things working
> as desired.

That is consistent with what I was proposing.

>
> But this would still leave many existing NLM issues on the table. It's
> a pipe dream that NLM (and NSM) will truly support correct locking
> semantics in the face of transient errors.

While perfection may well be unattainable, that shouldn't stop us from
fixing things which can be fixed.

Thanks,
NeilBrown


>
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Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Chuck Lever]

Hi Neil-

Ramblings inline.


> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
> but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
> 
> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
> makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
> 
> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
> the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
> non-blocking LOCK from client-B
> 
> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
> NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
> behind the UNLOCK request.
> 
> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
> handling requests:
> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
> LOCK from client-B - OK
> 
> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
> 
> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
> lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
> 
> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
> comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
> this problem won't occur.
> 
> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
> easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.

What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking
lock operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking
lock request is outstanding on an inode when another
such request is made, can EAGAIN be returned to the
application?


> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
> very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
> based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
> restricted to the range 3-20).

A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to
slow or lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not
consequence free).

Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server
needs to recharge its batteries seems like a very local
tuning adjustment.


> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
> that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.

To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM
RPCs soft, and the upper layer (NLM) would handle
the retries. When a soft RPC times out, that would
"cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
subsequent replies for it.

The problem is what happens when the server has
received and processed the original RPC, but the
reply itself is lost (say, because the TCP
connection closed due to a network partition).

Seems like there is similar capacity for the client
and server to disagree about the state of the lock.


--
Chuck Lever

Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[NeilBrown]

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On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:

> Hi Neil-
>
> Ramblings inline.
>
>
>> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
>> but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
>> 
>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
>> makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
>> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
>> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
>> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
>> 
>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
>> the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
>> non-blocking LOCK from client-B
>> 
>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
>> NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
>> behind the UNLOCK request.
>> 
>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
>> handling requests:
>> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>> LOCK from client-B - OK
>> 
>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
>> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
>> 
>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
>> lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
>> 
>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
>> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
>> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
>> comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
>> this problem won't occur.
>> 
>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
>> easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.
>
> What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking
> lock operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking
> lock request is outstanding on an inode when another
> such request is made, can EAGAIN be returned to the
> application?

I cannot quite see how this is relevant.
I imagine one app on one client is using non-blocking requests to try to
get a lock, and a different app on a different client holds, and then
drops, the lock.
I don't see how serialization on any one client will change that.

>
>
>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
>> very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
>> based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
>> restricted to the range 3-20).
>
> A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to
> slow or lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not
> consequence free).

True.  But for NFS/TCP the default timeout is 60 seconds.
For NLM/TCP the default is 10 seconds and a hard upper limit is 20
seconds.
This, at least, can be changed without fearing consequences.

>
> Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server
> needs to recharge its batteries seems like a very local
> tuning adjustment.

This is exactly what I've ask out partner to experiment with.  No
results yet.

>
>
>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
>> that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>
> To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM
> RPCs soft, and the upper layer (NLM) would handle
> the retries. When a soft RPC times out, that would
> "cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
> subsequent replies for it.

Soft, with zero retransmits I assume.  The NLM client already assumes
"hard" (it doesn't pay attention to the "soft" NFS option).  Moving that
indefinite retry from sunrpc to lockd would probably be easy enough.


>
> The problem is what happens when the server has
> received and processed the original RPC, but the
> reply itself is lost (say, because the TCP
> connection closed due to a network partition).
>
> Seems like there is similar capacity for the client
> and server to disagree about the state of the lock.

I think that as long as the client sees the reply to the *last* request,
they will end up agreeing.
So if requests can be re-order you could have problems, but tcp protects
us again that.

I'll have a look at what it would take to get NLM to re-issue requests.

Thanks,
NeilBrown


>
>
> --
> Chuck Lever
>
>
>
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Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Chuck Lever]

> On Mar 29, 2016, at 6:47 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
> 
>> Hi Neil-
>> 
>> Ramblings inline.
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
>>> but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
>>> 
>>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
>>> makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
>>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
>>> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
>>> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
>>> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
>>> 
>>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
>>> the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
>>> non-blocking LOCK from client-B
>>> 
>>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
>>> NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
>>> behind the UNLOCK request.
>>> 
>>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
>>> handling requests:
>>> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>>> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>>> LOCK from client-B - OK
>>> 
>>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
>>> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
>>> 
>>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
>>> lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
>>> 
>>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
>>> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
>>> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
>>> comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
>>> this problem won't occur.
>>> 
>>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
>>> easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.
>> 
>> What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking
>> lock operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking
>> lock request is outstanding on an inode when another
>> such request is made, can EAGAIN be returned to the
>> application?
> 
> I cannot quite see how this is relevant.
> I imagine one app on one client is using non-blocking requests to try to
> get a lock, and a different app on a different client holds, and then
> drops, the lock.
> I don't see how serialization on any one client will change that.

Each client and the server need to agree on the state of
a lock. If the client can send more than one non-blocking
request at the same time, it will surely be confused when
the requests or replies are misordered. IIUC this is
exactly what sequence IDs are for in NFSv4.


>>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
>>> very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
>>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
>>> based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
>>> restricted to the range 3-20).
>> 
>> A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to
>> slow or lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not
>> consequence free).
> 
> True.  But for NFS/TCP the default timeout is 60 seconds.
> For NLM/TCP the default is 10 seconds and a hard upper limit is 20
> seconds.
> This, at least, can be changed without fearing consequences.

The consequences are slower recovery from dropped requests.


>> Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server
>> needs to recharge its batteries seems like a very local
>> tuning adjustment.
> 
> This is exactly what I've ask out partner to experiment with.  No
> results yet.

It may indeed help this customer, but my point is this is
not a reason to make a change to the shrink-wrap defaults.


>>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
>>> that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>> 
>> To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM
>> RPCs soft, and the upper layer (NLM) would handle
>> the retries. When a soft RPC times out, that would
>> "cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
>> subsequent replies for it.
> 
> Soft, with zero retransmits I assume.  The NLM client already assumes
> "hard" (it doesn't pay attention to the "soft" NFS option).  Moving that
> indefinite retry from sunrpc to lockd would probably be easy enough.
> 
> 
>> 
>> The problem is what happens when the server has
>> received and processed the original RPC, but the
>> reply itself is lost (say, because the TCP
>> connection closed due to a network partition).
>> 
>> Seems like there is similar capacity for the client
>> and server to disagree about the state of the lock.
> 
> I think that as long as the client sees the reply to the *last* request,
> they will end up agreeing.

Can you show how you proved this to be the case?


> So if requests can be re-order you could have problems, but tcp protects
> us again that.

No, it doesn't. The server is free to put RPC replies
on a TCP socket in any order, and the TCP connection
can be lost at any time due to network partition.

(Note connection loss forces the server to drop the
reply, and the client is forced to retransmit, no matter
what the timeout may be).

NLM has to order these requests itself, somehow.


> I'll have a look at what it would take to get NLM to re-issue requests.

Easy to do, I would think, but with all the problems
guaranteeing idempotency that "soft" brings to the
table.


--
Chuck Lever

Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[NeilBrown]

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On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:

>> On Mar 29, 2016, at 6:47 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Neil-
>>> 
>>> Ramblings inline.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
>>>> but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
>>>> 
>>>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
>>>> makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
>>>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
>>>> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
>>>> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
>>>> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
>>>> 
>>>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
>>>> the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
>>>> non-blocking LOCK from client-B
>>>> 
>>>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
>>>> NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
>>>> behind the UNLOCK request.
>>>> 
>>>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
>>>> handling requests:
>>>> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>>>> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>>>> LOCK from client-B - OK
>>>> 
>>>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
>>>> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
>>>> 
>>>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
>>>> lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
>>>> 
>>>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
>>>> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
>>>> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
>>>> comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
>>>> this problem won't occur.
>>>> 
>>>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
>>>> easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.
>>> 
>>> What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking
>>> lock operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking
>>> lock request is outstanding on an inode when another
>>> such request is made, can EAGAIN be returned to the
>>> application?
>> 
>> I cannot quite see how this is relevant.
>> I imagine one app on one client is using non-blocking requests to try to
>> get a lock, and a different app on a different client holds, and then
>> drops, the lock.
>> I don't see how serialization on any one client will change that.
>
> Each client and the server need to agree on the state of
> a lock. If the client can send more than one non-blocking
> request at the same time, it will surely be confused when
> the requests or replies are misordered. IIUC this is
> exactly what sequence IDs are for in NFSv4.
>

If a client sends two different non-blocking requests they will have
different "svid" (aka client-side pid) values.  Providing the client
gets replies to both requests it shouldn't be confused about the
outcome.

Except... if two threads in the same process try non-blocking locks at
the same time....  That is probably a recipe for confusion, but I don't
think NLM makes it more confusing.
If the lock gets granted on the server, then it is quite possible that
either or both threads will think that they got the lock (as a lock held
by one thread does not conflict with a lock held by the other).  But at
least one thread will think it owns it.
If the lock doesn't get granted, neither threads will think they have it.

>
>>>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
>>>> very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
>>>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
>>>> based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
>>>> restricted to the range 3-20).
>>> 
>>> A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to
>>> slow or lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not
>>> consequence free).
>> 
>> True.  But for NFS/TCP the default timeout is 60 seconds.
>> For NLM/TCP the default is 10 seconds and a hard upper limit is 20
>> seconds.
>> This, at least, can be changed without fearing consequences.
>
> The consequences are slower recovery from dropped requests.

Is NLM more likely to drop requests than NFS?

>
>
>>> Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server
>>> needs to recharge its batteries seems like a very local
>>> tuning adjustment.
>> 
>> This is exactly what I've ask out partner to experiment with.  No
>> results yet.
>
> It may indeed help this customer, but my point is this is
> not a reason to make a change to the shrink-wrap defaults.
>

Even if those defaults are inconsistent? Treating NLM very differently
From NFS?

>
>>>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
>>>> that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>>> 
>>> To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM
>>> RPCs soft, and the upper layer (NLM) would handle
>>> the retries. When a soft RPC times out, that would
>>> "cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
>>> subsequent replies for it.
>> 
>> Soft, with zero retransmits I assume.  The NLM client already assumes
>> "hard" (it doesn't pay attention to the "soft" NFS option).  Moving that
>> indefinite retry from sunrpc to lockd would probably be easy enough.
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> The problem is what happens when the server has
>>> received and processed the original RPC, but the
>>> reply itself is lost (say, because the TCP
>>> connection closed due to a network partition).
>>> 
>>> Seems like there is similar capacity for the client
>>> and server to disagree about the state of the lock.
>> 
>> I think that as long as the client sees the reply to the *last* request,
>> they will end up agreeing.
>
> Can you show how you proved this to be the case?

Ahhh... It's "proof" you want is it.  Where is that envelope....

I'm assuming that a single process will be single-threaded with respect
to any given lock, so it can only race with other processes/clients.

If a process sends an arbitrary number of non-blocking LOCK requests,
then either none of them will be granted, or one will be granted and the
others will acknowledge that the lock is already in place.  There is no
difference in the NLM response between "You have just been granted this
lock" and "You already had this lock, why you ask again".  So the reply
to the last request will indicate if the lock is held or not.

For UNLOCK requests, the lock - if there was one - will be dropped on
the first request processed so multiple consecutive UNLOCK requests will
all return the same result, including particularly the last one.

For blocking LOCK requests the situation is much the same as non-blocking
locks except that the lock is granted pre-emptively (as soon as
something else unlocks it) and there is a GRANT callback.  Providing the
client continues to make LOCK requests until it is granted (as you would
expect), or makes an UNLOCK request repeatedly until that is acknowledged
(as you would expect if the lock attempt is aborted), one of the above
two cases applies.

Is that woffle enough of a proof?

>
>
>> So if requests can be re-order you could have problems, but tcp protects
>> us again that.
>
> No, it doesn't. The server is free to put RPC replies
> on a TCP socket in any order, and the TCP connection
> can be lost at any time due to network partition.

Re-ordering of replies isn't a problem - providing they don't have the
same 'xid' which is what I'm proposing.  The client can tell which reply
matches which request and will only attend to the reply to the *last*
request.

Re-ordering *requests* can be a problem.  But the client will put them
on the connection in the correct order.

If the client closes a TCP connection, opens a new one, and sends a
request, can the server still process requests that arrived on the first
connection after requests on the second?
I would hope that the "close connection" would wait for FIN+ACK from the
server, after which the server would not read anything more??

Thanks,
NeilBrown

>
> (Note connection loss forces the server to drop the
> reply, and the client is forced to retransmit, no matter
> what the timeout may be).
>
> NLM has to order these requests itself, somehow.
>
>
>> I'll have a look at what it would take to get NLM to re-issue requests.
>
> Easy to do, I would think, but with all the problems
> guaranteeing idempotency that "soft" brings to the
> table.
>
>
> --
> Chuck Lever
>
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-nfs" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

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Re: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Chuck Lever]

> On Mar 29, 2016, at 9:02 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
> 
>>> On Mar 29, 2016, at 6:47 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Neil-
>>>> 
>>>> Ramblings inline.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking protocol,
>>>>> but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse than I imagined.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and client-B
>>>>> makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
>>>>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
>>>>> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
>>>>> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
>>>>> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
>>>>> 
>>>>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A releases
>>>>> the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up behind the
>>>>> non-blocking LOCK from client-B
>>>>> 
>>>>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for TCP!) so
>>>>> NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and it queues up
>>>>> behind the UNLOCK request.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
>>>>> handling requests:
>>>>> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
>>>>> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
>>>>> LOCK from client-B - OK
>>>>> 
>>>>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
>>>>> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds a
>>>>> lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.  The
>>>>> application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking LOCK
>>>>> requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I assume each
>>>>> comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from the one process
>>>>> this problem won't occur.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such things
>>>>> easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.
>>>> 
>>>> What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking
>>>> lock operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking
>>>> lock request is outstanding on an inode when another
>>>> such request is made, can EAGAIN be returned to the
>>>> application?
>>> 
>>> I cannot quite see how this is relevant.
>>> I imagine one app on one client is using non-blocking requests to try to
>>> get a lock, and a different app on a different client holds, and then
>>> drops, the lock.
>>> I don't see how serialization on any one client will change that.
>> 
>> Each client and the server need to agree on the state of
>> a lock. If the client can send more than one non-blocking
>> request at the same time, it will surely be confused when
>> the requests or replies are misordered. IIUC this is
>> exactly what sequence IDs are for in NFSv4.
>> 
> 
> If a client sends two different non-blocking requests they will have
> different "svid" (aka client-side pid) values.  Providing the client
> gets replies to both requests it shouldn't be confused about the
> outcome.
> 
> Except... if two threads in the same process try non-blocking locks at
> the same time....  That is probably a recipe for confusion, but I don't
> think NLM makes it more confusing.

This is the case I'm concerned about.


> If the lock gets granted on the server, then it is quite possible that
> either or both threads will think that they got the lock (as a lock held
> by one thread does not conflict with a lock held by the other).  But at
> least one thread will think it owns it.
> If the lock doesn't get granted, neither threads will think they have it.
> 
>> 
>>>>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At the
>>>>> very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20 seconds.
>>>>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout is
>>>>> based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
>>>>> restricted to the range 3-20).
>>>> 
>>>> A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to
>>>> slow or lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not
>>>> consequence free).
>>> 
>>> True.  But for NFS/TCP the default timeout is 60 seconds.
>>> For NLM/TCP the default is 10 seconds and a hard upper limit is 20
>>> seconds.
>>> This, at least, can be changed without fearing consequences.
>> 
>> The consequences are slower recovery from dropped requests.
> 
> Is NLM more likely to drop requests than NFS?

It's quite possible that NLM may use UDP even if
NFS is using TCP.

It's also possible that lockd has more GFP_KERNEL
allocations in normal request paths than typical
small NFS operations, making it more vulnerable
to memory exhaustion.


>>>> Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server
>>>> needs to recharge its batteries seems like a very local
>>>> tuning adjustment.
>>> 
>>> This is exactly what I've ask out partner to experiment with.  No
>>> results yet.
>> 
>> It may indeed help this customer, but my point is this is
>> not a reason to make a change to the shrink-wrap defaults.
>> 
> 
> Even if those defaults are inconsistent? Treating NLM very differently
> From NFS?

NLM is all about managing in-memory state, while NFS has
to deal with the additional latency of permanent storage.

I would expect the two protocols to have different latency
distributions, and thus different timeout settings and
NLM would have a shorter timeout than NFS.


>>>>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would ensure
>>>>> that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
>>>> 
>>>> To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM
>>>> RPCs soft, and the upper layer (NLM) would handle
>>>> the retries. When a soft RPC times out, that would
>>>> "cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
>>>> subsequent replies for it.
>>> 
>>> Soft, with zero retransmits I assume.  The NLM client already assumes
>>> "hard" (it doesn't pay attention to the "soft" NFS option).  Moving that
>>> indefinite retry from sunrpc to lockd would probably be easy enough.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The problem is what happens when the server has
>>>> received and processed the original RPC, but the
>>>> reply itself is lost (say, because the TCP
>>>> connection closed due to a network partition).
>>>> 
>>>> Seems like there is similar capacity for the client
>>>> and server to disagree about the state of the lock.
>>> 
>>> I think that as long as the client sees the reply to the *last* request,
>>> they will end up agreeing.
>> 
>> Can you show how you proved this to be the case?
> 
> Ahhh... It's "proof" you want is it.  Where is that envelope....
> 
> I'm assuming that a single process will be single-threaded with respect
> to any given lock, so it can only race with other processes/clients.
> 
> If a process sends an arbitrary number of non-blocking LOCK requests,
> then either none of them will be granted, or one will be granted and the
> others will acknowledge that the lock is already in place.  There is no
> difference in the NLM response between "You have just been granted this
> lock" and "You already had this lock, why you ask again".  So the reply
> to the last request will indicate if the lock is held or not.

> For UNLOCK requests, the lock - if there was one - will be dropped on
> the first request processed so multiple consecutive UNLOCK requests will
> all return the same result, including particularly the last one.
> 
> For blocking LOCK requests the situation is much the same as non-blocking
> locks except that the lock is granted pre-emptively (as soon as
> something else unlocks it) and there is a GRANT callback.  Providing the
> client continues to make LOCK requests until it is granted (as you would
> expect), or makes an UNLOCK request repeatedly until that is acknowledged
> (as you would expect if the lock attempt is aborted), one of the above
> two cases applies.
> 
> Is that woffle enough of a proof?

Helpful, thanks!


>>> So if requests can be re-order you could have problems, but tcp protects
>>> us again that.
>> 
>> No, it doesn't. The server is free to put RPC replies
>> on a TCP socket in any order, and the TCP connection
>> can be lost at any time due to network partition.
> 
> Re-ordering of replies isn't a problem - providing they don't have the
> same 'xid' which is what I'm proposing.  The client can tell which reply
> matches which request and will only attend to the reply to the *last*
> request.

> Re-ordering *requests* can be a problem.  But the client will put them
> on the connection in the correct order.

"soft" is a convenient way to experiment with this
behavior, but it cannot be made reliable. A pending RPC
can time out on the client, but the server is still
processing it, and will run it to completion, even if
the client sends the same or a similar request again.
Request ordering is lost, and using a fresh XID can't
help.

I discovered a problem a long time ago with retransmits
re-ordering NFSv3 WRITE operations, which resulted in
data corruption. When disconnect is involved, the
client has to send the retransmitted requests in
exactly the same order they were originally sent.

That still doesn't guarantee correct ordering. It is well
known that requests can be processed out of order by the
server (precisely because of resource starvation!), and
that the server's replies can be put on the socket in any
order. As you say, normally that doesn't matter, but there
are times where it is critical.

The only way to guarantee request ordering in cases like
this is for the client to ensure that a reply is received
first, then a subsequent order-dependent request is sent.
The challenge is identifying all the order dependencies.


> If the client closes a TCP connection, opens a new one, and sends a
> request, can the server still process requests that arrived on the first
> connection after requests on the second?

Indeed it can.

The connection closes, but the server keeps processing
existing requests. When it comes time to put the replies
on the wire, the server realizes the original connection
is gone, and it drops the replies.

But the requests have taken effect. Fresh copies of
the same requests see different server state, and the
replies will possibly be different.

Same problem a premature "soft" timeout has.

All fixed by NFSv4 sessions, where there is a bounded
reply cache that can be reliably re-discovered after a
connection loss.


> I would hope that the "close connection" would wait for FIN+ACK from the
> server, after which the server would not read anything more??


--
Chuck Lever

RE: Should NLM resends change the xid ??

[Frank Filz]

> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
> 
> >> On Mar 29, 2016, at 6:47 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Mar 30 2016, Chuck Lever wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Neil-
> >>>
> >>> Ramblings inline.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On Mar 27, 2016, at 7:40 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I've always thought that NLM was a less-than-perfect locking
> >>>> protocol, but I recently discovered as aspect of it that is worse
than I
> imagined.
> >>>>
> >>>> Suppose client-A holds a lock on some region of a file, and
> >>>> client-B makes a non-blocking lock request for that region.
> >>>> Now suppose as just before handling that request the lockd thread
> >>>> on the server stalls - for example due to excessive memory pressure
> >>>> causing a kmalloc to take 11 seconds (rare, but possible.  Such
> >>>> allocations never fail, they just block until they can be served).
> >>>>
> >>>> During this 11 seconds (say, at the 5 second mark), client-A
> >>>> releases the lock - the UNLOCK request to the server queues up
> >>>> behind the non-blocking LOCK from client-B
> >>>>
> >>>> The default retry time for NLM in Linux is 10 seconds (even for
> >>>> TCP!) so NLM on client-B resends the non-blocking LOCK request, and
> >>>> it queues up behind the UNLOCK request.
> >>>>
> >>>> Now finally the lockd thread gets some memory/CPU time and starts
> >>>> handling requests:
> >>>> LOCK from client-B  - DENIED
> >>>> UNLOCK from client-A - OK
> >>>> LOCK from client-B - OK
> >>>>
> >>>> Both replies to client-B have the same XID so client-B will believe
> >>>> whichever one it gets first - DENIED.
> >>>>
> >>>> So now we have the situation where client-B doesn't think it holds
> >>>> a lock, but the server thinks it does.  This is not good.
> >>>>
> >>>> I think this explains a locking problem that a customer is seeing.
> >>>> The application seems to busy-wait for the lock using non-blocking
> >>>> LOCK requests.  Each LOCK request has a different 'svid' so I
> >>>> assume each comes from a different process. If you busy-wait from
> >>>> the one process this problem won't occur.
> >>>>
> >>>> Having a reply-cache on the server lockd might help, but such
> >>>> things easily fill up and cannot provide a guarantee.
> >>>
> >>> What would happen if the client serialized non-blocking lock
> >>> operations for each inode? Or, if a non-blocking lock request is
> >>> outstanding on an inode when another such request is made, can
> >>> EAGAIN be returned to the application?
> >>
> >> I cannot quite see how this is relevant.
> >> I imagine one app on one client is using non-blocking requests to try
> >> to get a lock, and a different app on a different client holds, and
> >> then drops, the lock.
> >> I don't see how serialization on any one client will change that.
> >
> > Each client and the server need to agree on the state of a lock. If
> > the client can send more than one non-blocking request at the same
> > time, it will surely be confused when the requests or replies are
> > misordered. IIUC this is exactly what sequence IDs are for in NFSv4.
> >
> 
> If a client sends two different non-blocking requests they will have
different
> "svid" (aka client-side pid) values.  Providing the client gets replies to
both
> requests it shouldn't be confused about the outcome.

Right, and with two different svid, that would definitely be two different
xid.

> Except... if two threads in the same process try non-blocking locks at the
> same time....  That is probably a recipe for confusion, but I don't think
NLM
> makes it more confusing.
> If the lock gets granted on the server, then it is quite possible that
either or
> both threads will think that they got the lock (as a lock held by one
thread
> does not conflict with a lock held by the other).  But at least one thread
will
> think it owns it.
> If the lock doesn't get granted, neither threads will think they have it.

Hmm, I think each system call should definitely result in a different XID,
so in the case of two threads making lock calls, it should result in two NFS
calls - UNLESS - the client processes the lock locally (in which case, a
system call to request a lock that is already held by the process could be
granted locally).

> >>>> Having a longer timeout on the client would probably help too.  At
> >>>> the very least we should increase the maximum timeout beyond 20
> seconds.
> >>>> (assuming I reading the code correctly, the client resend timeout
> >>>> is based on nlmsvc_timeout which is set from nlm_timeout which is
> >>>> restricted to the range 3-20).
> >>>
> >>> A longer timeout means the client is slower to respond to slow or
> >>> lost replies (ie, adjusting the timeout is not consequence free).
> >>
> >> True.  But for NFS/TCP the default timeout is 60 seconds.
> >> For NLM/TCP the default is 10 seconds and a hard upper limit is 20
> >> seconds.
> >> This, at least, can be changed without fearing consequences.
> >
> > The consequences are slower recovery from dropped requests.
> 
> Is NLM more likely to drop requests than NFS?
> 
> >
> >
> >>> Making the RTT slightly longer than this particular server needs to
> >>> recharge its batteries seems like a very local tuning adjustment.
> >>
> >> This is exactly what I've ask out partner to experiment with.  No
> >> results yet.
> >
> > It may indeed help this customer, but my point is this is not a reason
> > to make a change to the shrink-wrap defaults.
> >
> 
> Even if those defaults are inconsistent? Treating NLM very differently
From
> NFS?
> 
> >
> >>>> Forcing the xid to change on every retransmit (for NLM) would
> >>>> ensure that we only accept the last reply, which I think is safe.
> >>>
> >>> To make this work, then, you'd make client-side NLM RPCs soft, and
> >>> the upper layer (NLM) would handle the retries. When a soft RPC
> >>> times out, that would "cancel" that XID and the client would ignore
> >>> subsequent replies for it.
> >>
> >> Soft, with zero retransmits I assume.  The NLM client already assumes
> >> "hard" (it doesn't pay attention to the "soft" NFS option).  Moving
> >> that indefinite retry from sunrpc to lockd would probably be easy
enough.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> The problem is what happens when the server has received and
> >>> processed the original RPC, but the reply itself is lost (say,
> >>> because the TCP connection closed due to a network partition).
> >>>
> >>> Seems like there is similar capacity for the client and server to
> >>> disagree about the state of the lock.
> >>
> >> I think that as long as the client sees the reply to the *last*
> >> request, they will end up agreeing.
> >
> > Can you show how you proved this to be the case?
> 
> Ahhh... It's "proof" you want is it.  Where is that envelope....
> 
> I'm assuming that a single process will be single-threaded with respect to
any
> given lock, so it can only race with other processes/clients.
> 
> If a process sends an arbitrary number of non-blocking LOCK requests, then
> either none of them will be granted, or one will be granted and the others
> will acknowledge that the lock is already in place.  There is no
difference in
> the NLM response between "You have just been granted this lock" and "You
> already had this lock, why you ask again".  So the reply to the last
request will
> indicate if the lock is held or not.
> 
> For UNLOCK requests, the lock - if there was one - will be dropped on the
> first request processed so multiple consecutive UNLOCK requests will all
> return the same result, including particularly the last one.
> 
> For blocking LOCK requests the situation is much the same as non-blocking
> locks except that the lock is granted pre-emptively (as soon as something
> else unlocks it) and there is a GRANT callback.  Providing the client
continues
> to make LOCK requests until it is granted (as you would expect), or makes
an
> UNLOCK request repeatedly until that is acknowledged (as you would expect
> if the lock attempt is aborted), one of the above two cases applies.
> 
> Is that woffle enough of a proof?
> 
> >
> >
> >> So if requests can be re-order you could have problems, but tcp
> >> protects us again that.
> >
> > No, it doesn't. The server is free to put RPC replies on a TCP socket
> > in any order, and the TCP connection can be lost at any time due to
> > network partition.
> 
> Re-ordering of replies isn't a problem - providing they don't have the
same
> 'xid' which is what I'm proposing.  The client can tell which reply
matches
> which request and will only attend to the reply to the *last* request.
> 
> Re-ordering *requests* can be a problem.  But the client will put them on
> the connection in the correct order.
> 
> If the client closes a TCP connection, opens a new one, and sends a
request,
> can the server still process requests that arrived on the first connection
after
> requests on the second?
> I would hope that the "close connection" would wait for FIN+ACK from the
> server, after which the server would not read anything more??

Server could have read those requests off the socket, but not yet processed
them. Ganesha definitely does this. I'm not sure if there's a way to
synchronize and flush the queue when a socket is closed before FIN+ACK is
sent.

> Thanks,
> NeilBrown
> 
> >
> > (Note connection loss forces the server to drop the reply, and the
> > client is forced to retransmit, no matter what the timeout may be).
> >
> > NLM has to order these requests itself, somehow.
> >
> >
> >> I'll have a look at what it would take to get NLM to re-issue requests.
> >
> > Easy to do, I would think, but with all the problems guaranteeing
> > idempotency that "soft" brings to the table.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Chuck Lever
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-nfs"
> > in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More
> majordomo
> > info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


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