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RE: svnsync backwards-compatibility with older servers (Was: Re: svn commit: r999421)

From: Jon Foster <Jon.Foster_at_cabot.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:56:19 +0100

Hi,

Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> Stefan Sperling wrote on Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 15:45:41 +0200:
> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 03:33:20PM +0200, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> > > Stefan Sperling wrote on Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 14:31:58 +0200:
> > > > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 01:05:24PM +0200, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> > > > > Daniel Shahaf wrote on Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 18:50:56 +0200:
> > > > > > How about combining (1) and (3) --- that is, using the old
> > > > > > locking mode (with its known race condition) but print a
> > > > > > warning that the mirror server should be upgraded? That
> > > > > > seems better than a fatal error for a condition that needs
> > > > > > to be fixed on the server end.
> > > >
> > > > No replies, so I've implemented this in r999868. Let me know
> > > > what you think :).

I spent a while thinking about this. I think this is reasonable.
I think there will be people who use svnsync and have found that
the 1.6 locking has been working well enough for them. I now agree
we should let them keep using the old racy locking until they get
around to upgrading the mirror servers.

(I think "making upgrading to 1.7 easy" is probably the fastest
way to get everyone using fixed locking. And saying "svnsync 1.7
doesn't work against a 1.6 mirror unless you do some complicated
external locking stuff" makes the upgrade much harder).

Like Stefan, I was wondering whether this should be a command-line
option (either --allow-unsafe-locking or --safe-locking-only); I'm
not sure whether that would help or not. Printing the warning
every time might be enough.

> > > Does the corruption issue (considering its severity and
> > > commonness) really warrant an explicit flag?
> >
> > See Jon's comment made earlier about data integrity.
> >
> > But, granted, there isn't any loss of versioned data when the
> > race triggers. The mirror needs to be unwedged by tweaking the
> > svn:sync-* revprops at revision 0. It will then resume operation.
>
> Unwedging the mirror is not bad; if some commit were replayed twice to
> the mirror, /then/ I would be worried. :-)

FYI, it *can* replay commits twice to the mirror.

Real user bug report:
http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2010-01/0184.shtml

My analysis of that bug report:
http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2010-01/0197.shtml

To recover from that, the sysadmin would have to either delete
and remirror, dump/load, or restore from backup. On a big
repository, that's a lot of downtime.

And from Daniel's earlier mail:
> While here, there is a similar issue in svn_client_revprop_set2(). On
> the branch, it tries to be atomic if possible; but on trunk, it has
> always used a racy implementation. What do you think should be done
> in that case?

This is only used for "svn propedit" and GUI equivalents, right?

I think trying to be atomic if possible (i.e. what you do on the branch)
is the right approach. This function existed before atomic-revprops and
the race is even documented in it's docstring. Fixing the race is a
nice improvement.

The risk of hitting the race in svn_client_revprop_set2() is small, as
it requires two humans to edit a revprop at the same time. The
consequences are minor too - a possibly-incorrect revprop, which can
be easily propedited again.

I wouldn't worry about adding a "fail if not atomic" parameter. For
the weird usecases where people care about atomicity, there's svn_ra.

Kind regards,

Jon

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Received on 2010-09-22 16:57:01 CEST

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