Re: [PATCH 1/2] NLM failover unlock commands

["J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 10:48:56AM -0500, Wendy Cheng wrote:
> J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>> Remind me: why do we need both per-ip and per-filesystem methods?  In
>> practice, I assume that we'll always do *both*?
>>   
>
> Failover normally is done via virtual IP address - so per-ip base method  
> should be the core routine. However, for non-cluster filesystem such as  
> ext3/4, changing server also implies umount. If there are clients not  
> following rule and obtaining locks via different ip interfaces, umount  
> would fail that ends up aborting the failover process. That's the place  
> we need the per-filesystem method.
>
> ServerA:
> 1. Tear down the IP address
> 2. Unexport the path
> 3. Write IP to /proc/fs/nfsd/unlock_ip to unlock files
> 4. If unmount required,
> write path name to /proc/fs/nfsd/unlock_filesystem, then unmount.
> 5. Signal peer to begin take-over.
>
> Sometime ago we were looking at "export name" as the core method (so  
> per-filesystem method is a subset of that). Unfortunately, the prototype  
> efforts showed the code would be too intrusive (if filesystem sub-tree  
> is exported).
>> We're migrating clients by moving a server ip address from one node to
>> another.  And I assume we're permitting at most one node to export each
>> filesystem at a time.  So it *should* be the case that the set of locks
>> held on the filesystem(s) that are moving are the same as the set of
>> locks held by the virtual ip that is moving.
>>   
>
> This is true for non-cluster filesystem. But a cluster filesystem can be  
> exported from multiple servers.
>> But presumably in some scenarios clients can get confused, and we need
>> to ensure that stale locks are not left behind?
>>   
>
> Yes.
>
>> We've discussed this before, but we should get the answer into comments
>> in the code (or on the patches).
>>
>>   
> ok, working on it. or should we add something into linux/Documentation  
> to describe the overall logic ?

Yeah, sounds good.  Maybe under Documentation/filesystems?  And it might
also be helpful to leave a reference to it in the code, e.g., in
nfsctl.c:

	/*
	 * The following are used for failover; see
	 * Documentation/filesystems/nfsd-failover.txt for details.
	 */

--b.