Re: [RFC 4/5] NFSD: Defer copying

[Ric Wheeler <rwheeler@redhat.com>]

On 07/22/2013 08:55 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 03:54:00PM -0400, Bryan Schumaker wrote:
>> On 07/22/2013 03:43 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 03:37:00PM -0400, Bryan Schumaker wrote:
>>>> On 07/22/2013 03:30 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 03:17:29PM -0400, Bryan Schumaker wrote:
>>>>>> On 07/22/2013 02:50 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 05:03:49PM -0400, bjschuma@netapp.com wrote:
>>>>>>>> From: Bryan Schumaker <bjschuma@netapp.com>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Rather than performing the copy right away, schedule it to run later and
>>>>>>>> reply to the client.  Later, send a callback to notify the client that
>>>>>>>> the copy has finished.
>>>>>>> I believe you need to implement the referring triple support described
>>>>>>> in http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5661#section-2.10.6.3 to fix the race
>>>>>>> described in
>>>>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-nfsv4-minorversion2-19#section-15.1.3
>>>>>>> .
>>>>>> I'll re-read and re-write.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I see cb_delay initialized below, but not otherwise used.  Am I missing
>>>>>>> anything?
>>>>>> Whoops!  I was using that earlier to try to fake up a callback, but I eventually decided it's easier to just do the copy asynchronously.  I must have forgotten to take it out :(
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What about OFFLOAD_STATUS and OFFLOAD_ABORT?
>>>>>> I haven't thought out those too much... I haven't thought about a use for them on the client yet.
>>>>> If it might be a long-running copy, I assume the client needs the
>>>>> ability to abort if the caller is killed.
>>>>>
>>>>> (Dumb question: what happens on the network partition?  Does the server
>>>>> abort the copy when it expires the client state?)
>>>>>
>>>>> In any case,
>>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-nfsv4-minorversion2-19#section-15.1.3
>>>>> says "If a server's COPY operation returns a stateid, then the server
>>>>> MUST also support these operations: CB_OFFLOAD, OFFLOAD_ABORT, and
>>>>> OFFLOAD_STATUS."
>>>>>
>>>>> So even if we've no use for them on the client then we still need to
>>>>> implement them (and probably just write a basic pynfs test).  Either
>>>>> that or update the spec.
>>>> Fair enough.  I'll think it out and do something!  Easy solution: save this patch for later and only support the sync version of copy for the final version of this patch series.
>>> I can't remember--does the spec give the server a clear way to bail out
>>> and tell the client to fall back on a normal copy in cases where the
>>> server knows the copy could take an unreasonable amount of time?
>>>
>>> --b.
>> I don't think so.  Is there ever a case where copying over the network would be slower than copying on the server?
> Mybe not, but if the copy will take a minute, then we don't want to tie
> up an rpc slot for a minute.
>
> --b.

I think that we need to be able to handle copies that would take a lot longer 
than just a minute - this offload could take a very long time I assume depending 
on the size of the data getting copied and the back end storage device....

ric