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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KUDU-1194?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15537191#comment-15537191
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David Alves commented on KUDU-1194:
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My guess is that a server could get into this state in the following state:
Replicas A,B,C are part of a config, A is leader
Config change to remove C
(config changes actually change the membership before commitment, iirc)
B Fails
Now C's acknowledgement does not count to commit the entry and B isn't
available, so the cluster is stuck.
Was looking at LogCabin for this one. It seems that they always write to the
log (no truncation) and keep an in memory double-linked-list of configurations
that they can move forward/back.
Relevant pieces are here:
https://github.com/logcabin/logcabin/blob/master/Server/RaftConsensus.h#L687
https://github.com/logcabin/logcabin/blob/master/Server/RaftConsensus.cc#L1595
It seems like an "easy" work-around this is to make sure that we always have
one extra server (which I think todd already suggested):
Replicas A,B,C are part of a config, A is leader
Config change to add D
"Add D" committed.
Config change to remove C
B fails
For the A,B,D config (the final one) A,D votes are enough for commitment so
progress is guaranteed.
Of course we would still be stuck if both B _and_ D failed, but that seems much
more unlikely
> consensus: Allow abort of uncommittable config change ops
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: KUDU-1194
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KUDU-1194
> Project: Kudu
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: Mike Percy
> Assignee: Mike Percy
> Priority: Critical
>
> Wanted to capture a few thoughts about manually fixing broken configs or
> automatically rolling back bad config changes. This isn't a fully baked
> design, just wanted to jot down some initial thoughts.
> A general way to (attempt to) abort uncommitted ops is to truncate the Raft
> log on the leader (and replace the op with a NO_OP or something similar).
> Some thoughts on recovering from "bad" configs:
> * We may hit a situation where there is an in-progress config change
> operation that will be impossible to commit due to a majority of the nodes in
> the "target" config being permanently dead. If the leader is still alive, we
> can provide a timeout on these ops or a way to explicitly (via RPC) abort
> them by truncating the log.
> * If no leader is alive, and it's impossible to elect one, then we could
> write an "unsafe" tool only for emergency use that could do something evil
> like make the follower think that the tool is the new leader and append an
> unsafe change-config op to the follower's log.
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