Re: uids-as-names, compound, reply cache, cabbages and kings

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From: Spencer Shepler (shepler@eng.sun.com)
Date: 05/30/02-12:42:41 PM Z


Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 12:42:41 -0500
From: Spencer Shepler <shepler@eng.sun.com>
Subject: Re: uids-as-names, compound, reply cache, cabbages and kings
Message-ID: <20020530174241.GI101252@sheplerathome.eng.sun.com>

On Thu, Noveck, Dave wrote:
...
> 
> So here's the ugly case.  Somebody gives me a readdir
> with a very small max output.  It might be big enough
> to hold the output for a single file in the directory 
> or it might not, depending on how long the string for
> the uid turns out ot be.  So at post-processing, I
> may install the actual string if it fits, or return
> a NOSPC error.
> 
> But wait a minute.  I'm doing this after processing the
> request.  This might have been a COMPOUND in which there
> is some operation that followed the READDIR.  If I fail
> the readdir, then I shouldn't have done the following 
> operation, and if it had visible consequences then I
> would have to undo that operation, which would be very
> difficult or impossible to do.
> 
> So am I screwed here?  The answer is "No" because of some
> interesting serendipity.  Suppose someone did a COMPOUND
> consisting of READDIR followed by RENAME.  Or READ followed
> by WRITE or by REMOVE.  How could this be accommodated by
> the reply cache.  Not very easily.  The COMPOUND is clearly
> not idempotent so the reply cache information has to be saved.
> But that includes the idempotent operations before the 
> non-idempotent including operations like READ and READDIR
> that can generate lots of output.  Without COMPOUND, such
> operations would never have to be stored in the reply cache,
> and saving large amounts of data in a reply cache is highly
> undesirable.

In the specific case of READDIR, the server can choose to return the
fattr4_rdattr_error attribute to indicate a problem with the
attributes.  Therefore, if the server has enough space for the READDIR
response without attributes, it doesn't have to fail the entire
operation.

-- 
Spencer


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