[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 03:01:14PM -0400, David Collier-Brown wrote:
> > Ok, I've been looking at portable locking mechanisms and fcntl.
> >
> > A Smarter Colleague (Mark) pointed out that there are
> > scalability issues with fcntl locks on both Solaris
> > and Linux, but quite different ones.
>
> We haven't yet hit any scalability problems with fcntl
> locks on Linux. We use them in Samba a *lot* with the tdb's.
>
> Sorry Dave, as far as I can see this (at least the Samba fcntl
> issue) is a Solaris only problem :-) :-).
Yes, it indeed only occurs with Solaris: Samba
deosn't erally do anything non-scalable, it's
actually the mapping of application locks to
samba to fcntl locks on Solaris that isn't scaling.
> The tdb spinlock code is really unsafe to use in a production
> environment due to the potential to lock up the entire db
> on abend. Now I know you can make no consistency guarentees
> on abend even with fcntl locks, but when a process abends with
> an fcntl lock the lock is at least released to allow others to
> attempt a cleanup.
Posix locks, with the EOWNERDEAD hook have the same
cleanup guarantees as fcntl locks. The real disadvantage
is that they are not file-related locks, and even
though they have some advantages, do not protect
against a Unix process and a client using SMB from
whacking a file. Whacking as in "The Sopranos" (;-))
That's why they're a workaround.
>
> Please just fix the Solaris fcntl lock problem :-) :-).
I may need to drag you into the detailed discussion
to help expose what exactly is needed by Samba,
so we can see why our algorithm doesn't provide it...
--dave
--
David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify
Performance & Engineering | some people and astonish the rest.
Americas Customer Engineering, | -- Mark Twain
(905) 415-2849 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
