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http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-701?page=comments#action_12446677 ]
Michael McCandless commented on LUCENE-701:
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Right, this is just normal contention. We do indeed retry around not
only loading of segments_N but also the loading of the individual
segments files. There are other places (eg lastModified()) that do
other things with the segments file. These places also use the retry
logic.
In Lucene currently, contention causes a pause (default 1.0 second)
and then retry to obtain the commit lock. With lockless, we simply
retry immediately loading the latest segments_N file.
It's important to note that at any given instant, the index is always
"consistent" (well, except for issues like LUCENE-702 ).
But, because a reader takes non-zero time to load the index, you can
hit contention if a writer's commit spans that time. If a reader
could load an index in zero time there would never be contention.
There are several ways that contention will manifest itself. These
are just the different alignments / convolutions of the series of
steps that reader goes through "sliding against" the series of steps
that a writer goes through:
* Reader opens the segments_N but in reading it hits EOF because
writer has not finished writing it yet.
* Reader opens segments_N, fully reads its contents, but then hits
IOException on loading each segment file because during this team
writer has committed and is now deleting segments files. This
case is your example above.
* Reader opens segments_N, but hits IOException while reading its
contents because it was deleted by writer before reader could read
all of its contents (should only happen on fileystems that don't
do "delete on last close" or "can't delete open files").
* Reader takes listing of directory, locates segments_N, but fails
to open that file because writer has now removed it.
Anyway, on hitting an IOException, we first retry segments_N-1 (if it
exists). Failing that we recheck the directory for latest segments_N.
If N has advanced we try that. If N has not advanced we give it one
more chance to load (since it could be on first try we hit case 1
above). If it fails that second chance and on re-listing we are still
at N, we throw the original exception we hit.
I added a couple of tests cases to TestIndexWriter to verify that a
messed up index indeed throws an IOException.
On Yonik's question:
> Then a question might be, could a writer possibly change the index
> fast enough to prevent a reader from opening at all? I don't think
> so (and it would be a mis-configured writer IMO), but maybe Michael
> could speak to that.
This is definitely possible. This really is a form of "starvation".
If a writer is committing too fast, or, readers are constantly
re-opening too fast, they will starve one another.
Both current Lucene and lockless will hit starvation under high enough
rate of commit/opens, but, different things happen. EG LUCENE-307
issue is exactly this case on the current Lucene. Lockless will retry
indefinitely though may at some point succeed (but take many
retries to do so).
Still, I think the point at which starvation starts to happen is far
beyond a normal usage of Lucene (ie, committing > ten times / sec).
> Lock-less commits
> -----------------
>
> Key: LUCENE-701
> URL: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-701
> Project: Lucene - Java
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Components: Index
> Affects Versions: 2.1
> Reporter: Michael McCandless
> Assigned To: Michael McCandless
> Priority: Minor
> Attachments: index.prelockless.cfs.zip, index.prelockless.nocfs.zip,
> lockless-commits-patch.txt
>
>
> This is a patch based on discussion a while back on lucene-dev:
>
> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/lucene-java-dev/200608.mbox/[EMAIL
> PROTECTED]
> The approach is a small modification over the original discussion (see
> Retry Logic below). It works correctly in all my cross-machine test
> case, but I want to open it up for feedback, testing by
> users/developers in more diverse environments, etc.
> This is a small change to how lucene stores its index that enables
> elimination of the commit lock entirely. The write lock still
> remains.
> Of the two, the commit lock has been more troublesome for users since
> it typically serves an active role in production. Whereas the write
> lock is usually more of a design check to make sure you only have one
> writer against the index at a time.
> The basic idea is that filenames are never reused ("write once"),
> meaning, a writer never writes to a file that a reader may be reading
> (there is one exception: the segments.gen file; see "RETRY LOGIC"
> below). Instead it writes to generational files, ie, segments_1, then
> segments_2, etc. Besides the segments file, the .del files and norm
> files (.sX suffix) are also now generational. A generation is stored
> as an "_N" suffix before the file extension (eg, _p_4.s0 is the
> separate norms file for segment "p", generation 4).
> One important benefit of this is it avoids files contents caching
> entirely (the likely cause of errors when readers open an index
> mounted on NFS) since the file is always a new file.
> With this patch I can reliably instantiate readers over NFS when a
> writer is writing to the index. However, with NFS, you are still forced to
> refresh your reader once a writer has committed because "point in
> time" searching doesn't work over NFS (see LUCENE-673 ).
> The changes are fully backwards compatible: you can open an old index
> for searching, or to add/delete docs, etc. I've added a new unit test
> to test these cases.
> All units test pass, and I've added a number of additional unit tests,
> some of which fail on WIN32 in the current lucene but pass with this
> patch. The "fileformats.xml" has been updated to describe the changes
> to the files (but XXX references need to be fixed before committing).
> There are some other important benefits:
> * Readers are now entirely read-only.
> * Readers no longer block one another (false contention) on
> initialization.
> * On hitting contention, we immediately retry instead of a fixed
> (default 1.0 second now) pause.
> * No file renaming is ever done. File renaming has caused sneaky
> access denied errors on WIN32 (see LUCENE-665 ). (Yonik, I used
> your approach here to not rename the segments_N file(try
> segments_(N-1) on hitting IOException on segments_N): the separate
> ".done" file did not work reliably under very high stress testing
> when a directory listing was not "point in time").
> * On WIN32, you can now call IndexReader.setNorm() even if other
> readers have the index open (fixes a pre-existing minor bug in
> Lucene).
> * On WIN32, You can now create an IndexWriter with create=true even
> if readers have the index open (eg see
> www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-user/39265) .
> Here's an overview of the changes:
> * Every commit writes to the next segments_(N+1).
> * Loading the segments_N file (& opening the segments) now requires
> retry logic. I've captured this logic into a new static class:
> SegmentInfos.FindSegmentsFile. All places that need to do
> something on the current segments file now use this class.
> * No more deletable file. Instead, the writer computes what's
> deletable on instantiation and updates this in memory whenever
> files can be deleted (ie, when it commits). Created a common
> class index.IndexFileDeleter shared by reader & writer, to manage
> deletes.
> * Storing more information into segments info file: whether it has
> separate deletes (and which generation), whether it has separate
> norms, per field (and which generation), whether it's compound or
> not. This is instead of relying on IO operations (file exists
> calls). Note that this fixes the current misleading
> FileNotFoundException users now see when an _X.cfs file is missing
> (eg http://www.nabble.com/FileNotFound-Exception-t6987.html).
> * Fixed some small things about RAMDirectory that were not
> filesystem-like (eg opening a non-existent IndexInput failed to
> raise IOException; renames were not atomic). I added a stress
> test against a RAMDirectory (1 writer thread & 2 reader threads)
> that uncovered these.
> * Added option to not remove old files when create=true on creating
> FSDirectory; this is so the writer can do its own [more
> sophisticated because it retries on errors] removal.
> * Removed all references to commit lock, COMMIT_LOCK_TIMEOUT, etc.
> (This is an API change).
> * Extended index/IndexFileNames.java and index/IndexFileNameFilter.java
> with logic for computing generational file names.
> * Changed index/IndexFileNameFilter.java to use a HashSet to check
> file extentsions for better performance.
> * Fixed the test case TestIndexReader.testLastModified: it was
> incorrectly (I think?) comparing lastModified to version, of the
> index. I fixed that and then added a new test case for version.
> Retry Logic (in index/SegmentInfos.java)
> If a reader tries to load the segments just as a writer is committing,
> it may hit an IOException. This is just normal contention. In
> current Lucene contention causes a [default] 1.0 second pause then
> retry. With lock-less the contention causes no added delay beyond the
> time to retry.
> When this happens, we first try segments_(N-1) if present, because it
> could be segments_N is still being written. If that fails, we
> re-check to see if there is now a newer segments_M where M > N and
> advance if so. Else we retry segments_N once more (since it could be
> it was in process previously but must now be complete since
> segments_(N-1) did not load).
> In order to find the current segments_N file, I list the directory and
> take the biggest segments_N that exists.
> However, under extreme stress testing (5 threads just opening &
> closing readers over and over), on one platform (OS X) I found that
> the directory listing can be incorrect (stale) by up to 1.0 seconds.
> This means the listing will show a segments_N file but that file does
> not exist (fileExists() returns false).
> In order to handle this (and other such platforms), I switched to a
> hybrid approach (originally proposed by Doron Cohen in the original
> thread): on committing, the writer writes to a file "segments.gen" the
> generation it just committed. It writes 2 identical longs into this
> file. The retry logic, on detecting that the directory listing is
> stale falls back to the contents of this file. If that file is
> consistent (the two longs are identical), and, the generation is
> indeed newer than the dir listing, it will use that.
> Finally, if this approach is also stale, we fallback to stepping
> through sequential generations (up to a maximum # tries). If all 3
> methods fail, we throw the original exception we hit.
> I added a static method SegmentInfos.setInfoStream() which will print
> details of retry attempts. In the patch it's set to System.out right
> now (we should turn off before a real commit) so if there are problems
> we can see what retry logic had done.
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