On Mon, 1 May 2006, Davi Arnaut wrote:
More important, if we stick with the key/data concept it's possible to
implement the header/body relationship under single or multiple keys.
I've been hacking on mod_disk_cache to make it:
* Only store one set of data when one uncached item is accessed
simultaneously (currently all requests cache the file and the last
finished cache process is "wins").
* Don't wait until the whole item is cached, reply while caching
(currently it stalls).
* Don't block the requesting thread when requestng a large uncached
item, cache in the background and reply while caching (currently it
stalls).
This is mostly aimed at serving huge static files from a slow disk
backend (typically an NFS export from a server holding all the disk),
such as http://ftp.acc.umu.se/ and http://ftp.heanet.ie/ .
Doing this with the current mod_disk_cache disk layout was not
possible, doing the above without unneccessary locking means:
* More or less atomic operations, so caching headers and data in
separate files gets very messy if you want to keep consistency.
* You can't use tempfiles since you want to be able to figure out
where the data is to be able to reply while caching.
* You want to know the size of the data in order to tell when you're
done (ie the current size of a file isn't necessarily the real size
of the body since it might be caching while we're reading it).
In the light of our experiences, I really think that you want to have
a concept that allows you to keep the bond between header and data.
Yes, you can patch up a missing bond by require locking and stuff, but
I really prefer not having to lock cache files when doing read access.
When it comes to "make the common case fast" a lockless design is very
much preferred.
However, if all those issues are sorted out in the layer above disk
cache then the above observations becomes more or less moot.
In any case the patch is more or less finished, independent testing
and auditing haven't been done yet but I can submit a preliminary
jumbo-patch if people are interested in having a look at it now.
/Nikke
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Niklas Edmundsson, Admin @ {acc,hpc2n}.umu.se | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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