Re: [PATCH 1/2] NFSv4: Fix CLOSE races with OPEN

["Benjamin Coddington" <bcodding@redhat.com>]

Hi Olga,

On 13 Feb 2018, at 15:08, Olga Kornievskaia wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 11:19 AM, Trond Myklebust
> <trond.myklebust@primarydata.com> wrote:
>> If the reply to a successful CLOSE call races with an OPEN to the same
>> file, we can end up scribbling over the stateid that represents the
>> new open state.
>> The race looks like:
>>
>>   Client                                Server
>>   ======                                ======
>>
>>   CLOSE stateid A on file "foo"
>>                                         CLOSE stateid A, return stateid C
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I'd like to understand this particular issue. Specifically I don't
> understand how can server return stateid C to the close with stateid
> A.

I think in this explanation of the race, stateid C is an incremented version
of A -- the stateid's "other" fields match -- OR it is the invalid special
stateid according to RFC 5661, Section 18.2.4.

> As per RFC 7530 or 5661. It says that state is returned by the close
> shouldn't be used.
>
> Even though CLOSE returns a stateid, this stateid is not useful to
>    the client and should be treated as deprecated.  CLOSE "shuts down"
>    the state associated with all OPENs for the file by a single
>    open-owner.  As noted above, CLOSE will either release all file
>    locking state or return an error.  Therefore, the stateid returned by
>    CLOSE is not useful for the operations that follow.
>
> Is this because the spec says "should" and not a "must"?

I don't understand - is what because?  The state returned from CLOSE is
useful to be used by the client for housekeeping, but it won't be re-used in
the protocol.

> Linux server increments a state's sequenceid on CLOSE. Ontap server
> does not. I'm not sure what other servers do. Are all these
> implementations equality correct?

Ah, good question there..  Even though the stateid is not useful for
operations that follow, I think the sequenceid should be incremented because
the CLOSE is an operation that modifies the set of locks or state:

In RFC 7530, Section 9.1.4.2.:
...
   When such a set of locks is first created, the server returns a
   stateid with a seqid value of one.  On subsequent operations that
   modify the set of locks, the server is required to advance the
   seqid field by one whenever it returns a stateid for the same
   state-owner/file/type combination and the operation is one that might
   make some change in the set of locks actually designated.  In this
   case, the server will return a stateid with an "other" field the same
   as previously used for that state-owner/file/type combination, with
   an incremented seqid field.

But, in RFC 5661, the CLOSE response SHOULD be the invalid special stateid.
I don't recall, does the linux server increment the existing stateid or send
back the invalid special stateid on v4.1?

Ben