Re: locking errors

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From: Brian Pawlowski (beepy@netapp.com)
Date: 09/25/98-04:17:16 PM Z


From: beepy@netapp.com (Brian Pawlowski)
Message-Id: <199809252117.OAA00861@cranford.netapp.com>
Subject: Re: locking errors
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 14:17:16 -0700 (PDT)

> This brings me to the subject of lock failure. I don't think leases
> are going to be acceptable in all environments. Could variable duration
> leases, with a client facility for requesting "no lease" - the client
> holds the lock until it lets it go be made to work?. 

I'll respond between the two paragraphs.

I'm not sure that CIFS/Windows locks have the persistence you desire.

Leases are a mechanism to simplify state management in the face of
failures (including network partitions).  They simply provide the
server a final control over access to a file while simplifying the
state clean-up (lease expiration) in the face of non-responding
clients.

My understanding is today, if a CIFS client terminates (surely
an infrequent occurrence:-) the server will time out something like
an OpLock break to the non-responding client and yield the OpLock
to the new requester.  Or some such.

The end result of this behaviour is similar to lease expiry and 
non-responding clients.

I think when designing V4 and locking, we need to consider the >99%
solution that works in most cases and explain the <1% failure modes
(result of lease expiry and possible affect on client data).

Network partitions and unexpected client failures are unavoidable.

> Yes, this implies an administrative intervention scheme.
> But it would be better than abandoning some LAN
> environments where they are expecting strict CIFS/Windoz-like
> behavior and the administrator finds it easier to manually
> release locks than to explain to users continually why
> NFS lock lease expiration terminated their application
> or corrupted their data. 
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -- 
> John Maddalozzo		  John speaketh not for his employer. 
> IBM RS/6000 Division               internet:    john@austin.ibm.com 
> 11400 Burnet Road, M.S. 9541       Notes:        jmadd@us.ibm.com
> Austin, TX  78758-3493 U.S.A       phone:       +1 (512) 838-2686 
> 


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