[Ocfs2-devel] avoid being purged when queued for assert_master

[Wengang Wang]

Hi Sunil/Joel/Mark and anyone who has interest,

This is not a patch but a discuss.

Currently we have a problem:
When a lockres is still queued(in dlm->work_list) for sending an
assert_master(or in processing of sending), the lockres can't be
purged(removed from hash). there is no flag/state,on lockres its self,dinotes
this situation.

The badness is that if the lockres is purged(surely not the owner at the
moment), and the assert_master is after the purge. it can confuse other
nodes. On another node, the owner now can be any other nodes, thus on
receiving the assert_master, it can trigger a BUG() because 'owner'
doesn't match.

So we'd better to prevent the lockres from be purged when it's queued
for something(assert_master).

Srini and I discussed some possible fixes:
1) adding a flag to lockres->state.
   this does not work. A lockres can have multiple instances in the queue list.
   A simple flag is not safe. And the instances are not nested, so even
   saving a previous flags doesn't work. Neither can we merge the instances
   because they can be for different purposes.

2) checking if the lockres if queued before purging it.
  this works, but doesn't sounds good. it needs changes of current behaviour
  on the queue list.   Also, we have no idea on the performance of the checking
  (searching list).

3) making use of lockres->inflight_locks.
  this works, but seems to be a mis-use of inflight_locks.

4) adding a new member to lockres counting the queued time.
   this works and simple. but needs extra memory.

I prefer to the 4).

What's your idea?

thanks,
wengang.