Re: New client-side locking implementation

Matt Benjamin <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.file-systems.openafs.devel.win32
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Jeffrey Altman wrote:

>Eric Williams wrote:
>  
>
>Eric:
>
>I wanted to come back to this portion of the thread for a few minutes.
>Given that the Windows locking model is "mandatory", do you have a
>proposal for how "advisory locking" could be used while still
>maintaining data integrity?
>
>Jeffrey Altman
>  
>
Jeff,

I said what I said originally only to get some things cleared up, eg, 
wrt byte-range locks you can take out on the existing client.  I don't 
think Eric has any such suggestion?  As you stated, the model on Windows 
is mandatory, notwithstanding, I am no expert on Windows behaviors or 
APIs.  Unless I mistake myself again, you don't get data integrity on 
Windows with an advisory model, simply because clients are written to 
expect this behavior.  I can't imagine the first thing a Windows 
programmer does when he can't lock a byte-range, is write in it.  
Therefore, I surmise that advisory range locking, with whole-file lock 
in AFS, might actually improve the behavior of some clients.  I am not 
suggesting that this would be desirable.  Are you speculating that it would?

The last bit of your original message addressed itself to posix 
locking.  I haven't read the nfsv4 wg posts; however, the posix locking 
model is advisory.  I believe it is established that cooperating 
applications can provide data integrity in the posix model using fcntl 
(or lockf) and fsync/fdatasync.  Of course, uncooperative clients with 
correct permissions can do what they like to locked files.  The advisory 
model considers this not a violation of data integrity, but a 
permissions or application problem.

Matt

-- 

Matt Benjamin

The Linux Box
206 South Fifth Ave. Suite 150
Ann Arbor, MI  48104

http://linuxbox.com

tel. 734-761-4689
fax. 734-769-8938
cel. 734-216-5309
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.