tahoe-lafs/trac-2024-07-25
2
0
Issues 1.1k Wiki Activity

replace with link to docs/known_issues.txt (for now) 

[Imported from Trac: page KnownIssues, version 4]
zooko 2008-06-10 23:32:12 +00:00
parent 1e6b888e60
commit 2c70cd4f3e
1 changed files with 1 additions and 153 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

154
KnownIssues.md

@ -1,153 +1 @@
# Known Issues Please see source:docs/known_issues.txt.
Below is a list of known issues in recent releases of Tahoe, and how to manage
them.
## issues in Tahoe v1.1.0, released 2008-06-10
### issue 1: server out of space when writing mutable file
If a v1.0 or v1.1.0 storage server runs out of disk space then its attempts to
write data to the local filesystem will fail. For immutable files, this will
not lead to any problem (the attempt to upload that share to that server will
fail, the partially uploaded share will be deleted from the storage server's
"incoming shares" directory, and the client will move on to using another
storage server instead).
If the write was an attempt to modify an existing mutable file, however, a
problem will result: when the attempt to write the new share fails due to
insufficient disk space, then it will be aborted and the old share will be left
in place. If enough such old shares are left, then a subsequent read may get
those old shares and see the file in its earlier state, which is a "rollback"
failure. With the default parameters (3-of-10), six old shares will be enough
to potentially lead to a rollback failure.
#### how to manage it
Make sure your Tahoe storage servers don't run out of disk space. This means
refusing storage requests before the disk fills up. There are a couple of ways
to do that with v1.1.
First, there is a configuration option named "sizelimit" which will cause the
storage server to do a "du" style recursive examination of its directories at
startup, and then if the sum of the size of files found therein is greater than
the "sizelimit" number, it will reject requests by clients to write new
immutable shares.
However, that can take a long time (something on the order of a minute of
examination of the filesystem for each 10 GB of data stored in the Tahoe
server), and the Tahoe server will be unavailable to clients during that time.
Another option is to set the "readonly_storage" configuration option on the
storage server before startup. This will cause the storage server to reject
all requests to upload new immutable shares.
Note that neither of these configurations affect mutable shares: even if
sizelimit is configured and the storage server currently has greater space used
than allowed, or even if readonly_storage is configured, servers will continue
to accept new mutable shares and will continue to accept requests to overwrite
existing mutable shares.
Mutable files are typically used only for directories, and are usually much
smaller than immutable files, so if you use one of these configurations to stop
the influx of immutable files while there is still sufficient disk space to
receive an influx of (much smaller) mutable files, you may be able to avoid the
potential for "rollback" failure.
A future version of Tahoe will include a fix for this issue. Here is
[the mailing list
discussion](http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2008-May/000630.html) about how that future version will work.
## issues in Tahoe v1.1.0 and v1.0.0
### issue 2: pyOpenSSL and/or Twisted defect resulting false alarms in the unit tests
The combination of Twisted v8.1.0 and pyOpenSSL v0.7 causes the Tahoe v1.1 unit
tests to fail, even though the behavior of Tahoe itself which is being tested is
correct.
#### how to manage it
If you are using Twisted v8.1.0 and pyOpenSSL v0.7, then please ignore XYZ in
XYZ. Downgrading to an older version of Twisted or pyOpenSSL will cause those
false alarms to stop happening.
## issues in Tahoe v1.0.0, released 2008-03-25
(Tahoe v1.0 was superceded by v1.1 which was released 2008-06-10.)
### issue 3: server out of space when writing mutable file
In addition to the problems caused by insufficient disk space described above,
v1.0 clients which are writing mutable files when the servers fail to write to
their filesystem are likely to think the write succeeded, when it in fact
failed. This can cause data loss.
#### how to manage it
Upgrade client to v1.1, or make sure that servers are always able to write to
their local filesystem (including that there is space available) as described in
"issue 1" above.
### issue 4: server out of space when writing immutable file
Tahoe v1.0 clients are using v1.0 servers which are unable to write to their
filesystem during an immutable upload will correctly detect the first failure,
but if they retry the upload without restarting the client, or if another client
attempts to upload the same file, the second upload may appear to succeed when
it hasn't, which can lead to data loss.
#### how to manage it
Upgrading either or both of the client and the server to v1.1 will fix this
issue. Also it can be avoided by ensuring that the servers are always able to
write to their local filesystem (including that there is space available) as
described in "issue 1" above.
### issue 5: large directories or mutable files in a specific range of sizes
If a client attempts to upload a large mutable file with a size greater than
about 3,139,000 and less than or equal to 3,500,000 bytes then it will fail but
appear to succeed, which can lead to data loss.
(Mutable files larger than 3,500,000 are refused outright). The symptom of the
failure is very high memory usage (3 GB of memory) and 100% CPU for about 5
minutes, before it appears to succeed, although it hasn't.
Directories are stored in mutable files, and a directory of approximately 9000
entries may fall into this range of mutable file sizes (depending on the size of
the filenames or other metadata associated with the entries).
#### how to manage it
This was fixed in v1.1, under ticket #379. If the client is upgraded to v1.1,
then it will fail cleanly instead of falsely appearing to succeed when it tries
to write a file whose size is in this range. If the server is also upgraded to
v1.1, then writes of mutable files whose size is in this range will succeed.
(If the server is upgraded to v1.1 but the client is still v1.0 then the client
will still suffer this failure.)
### issue 6: pycryptopp defect resulting in data corruption
Versions of pycryptopp earlier than pycryptopp-0.5.0 had a defect which, when
compiled with some compilers, would cause AES-256 encryption and decryption to
be computed incorrectly. This could cause data corruption. Tahoe v1.0
required, and came with a bundled copy of, pycryptopp v0.3.
#### how to manage it
You can detect whether pycryptopp-0.3 has this failure when it is compiled by
your compiler. Run the unit tests that come with pycryptopp-0.3: unpack the
"pycryptopp-0.3.tar" file that comes in the Tahoe v1.0 `misc/dependencies`
directory, cd into the resulting `pycryptopp-0.3.0` directory, and execute
`python ./setup.py test`. If the tests pass, then your compiler does not
trigger this failure.
Tahoe v1.1 requires, and comes with a bundled copy of, pycryptopp v0.5.1, which
does not have this defect.