Re: [PATCH 0/2] sunrpc: more reliable detection of running gssd

[Steve Dickson <SteveD@redhat.com>]

On 12/11/13 08:00, Jeff Layton wrote:
> We've gotten a lot of complaints recently about the 15s delay when
> doing a sec=sys mount without gssd running.
> 
> A large part of the problem is that the kernel isn't able to reliably
> detect when rpc.gssd is running. What we currently have is a
> gssd_running flag that is initially set to 1. When an upcall times out,
> that gets set to 0, and subsequent upcalls get a much shorter timeout
> (1/4s instead of 15s). It's reset back to '1' when a pipe is reopened.
> 
> The approach of using a flag like this is pretty inadequate. First, it
> doesn't eliminate the long delay on the initial upcall attempt. Also,
> if gssd spontaneously dies, then the flag will still be set to 1 until
> the next upcall attempt times out. Finally, it currently requires that
> the pipe be reopened in order to reset the flag back to true.
> 
> This patchset replaces that flag with a more reliable mechanism for
> detecting when gssd is running. When rpc_pipefs is mounted, it creates a
> new "dummy" pipe that gssd will naturally find and hold open. We'll
> never send an upcall down this pipe, and writing to it always fails.
> But, since we can detect when something is holding it open, we can use
> that to determine whether gssd is running.
> 
> The current patch just uses this mechanism to replace the gssd_running
> flag with this new mechanism. This shortens the long delay when mounting
> without gssd running, but does not silence these warnings:
> 
>     RPC: AUTH_GSS upcall timed out.
>     Please check user daemon is running.
> 
> I'm willing to add a patch to do that, but I'm a little unclear on the
> best way to do so. Those messages are generated by the auth_gss code. We
> probably do want to print them if someone mounted with sec=krb5, but
> suppress them when mounting with sec=sys.
> 
> Do we need to somehow pass down that intent to auth_gss? Another idea
> would be to call gssd_running() from the nfs mount code and use that to
> determine whether to try and use krb5 at all...
> 
> Discuss!
I've just verified that a mount, with these patches, takes about 
1.2 seconds when rpc.gssd is not running.... With rpc.gssd it 
take about .2 seconds.

Tested-by: Steve Dickson <steved@redhat.com>

steved.