Return-Path: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org Received: from mail-qa0-f53.google.com ([209.85.216.53]:37922 "EHLO mail-qa0-f53.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752101Ab2DPTmm (ORCPT ); Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:42:42 -0400 Message-ID: <4F8C7648.8000701@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:43:04 -0400 From: Scott Lovenberg MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeff Layton CC: Bernd Schubert , Malahal Naineni , linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, pstaubach@exagrid.com, miklos@szeredi.hu, viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk, hch@infradead.org, michael.brantley@deshaw.com, sven.breuner@itwm.fraunhofer.de Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] vfs: make fstatat retry on ESTALE errors from getattr call References: <1334316311-22331-1-git-send-email-jlayton@redhat.com> <20120413150518.GA1987@us.ibm.com> <20120413114236.0e557e01@tlielax.poochiereds.net> <4F8B1B7B.3040304@itwm.fraunhofer.de> <20120416073655.7cdb90cf@corrin.poochiereds.net> <4F8C3036.2030702@itwm.fraunhofer.de> <20120416134642.1754cd3e@corrin.poochiereds.net> In-Reply-To: <20120416134642.1754cd3e@corrin.poochiereds.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 4/16/2012 1:46 PM, Jeff Layton wrote: > NFS will generally return a different error if the process catches a > fatal signal, so a soft mount should not be necessary and is not > recommended anyway... > > In any case, we loop indefinitely now in the NFS code when (for > instance) there's a loss of communication. Users are not generally > happy if that causes an error, since their applications start dying. > From the peanut gallery, I've always set an infinite loop with an exponential backoff on the loss of communication. IE, in some code I wrote for S3backer (a FUSE file system on top of Amazon EC3) a few years ago (committed by Archie Cobbs). The trade off is that your applications will try to submit requests if you don't tell them "leave me alone, I can't service you now". The more I think about it, the more it seems like failing silently. Isn't the rule supposed to be "if you must fail, do it loudly and as soon as possible"? Just my $0.02. Take it as you will.