[OpenAFS] Re: afs.GCPAGs in current releases under Linux (RHEL4/5)

[Simon Wilkinson]

On 5 Mar 2010, at 18:57, Andrew Deason wrote:
> We call afs_pag_destroy when the key goes away, but that only
> invalidates the credentials; it doesn't remove it from the appropriate
> afs_users chain. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think until we
> afs_GCUserData, afs_users lists can grow very large.
> afs_ComputePAGStats traverses the whole list, so that could explain it
> taking so much time.

That's my theory - just waiting for the data to confirm it.

> Could we remove the unixuser from the list in afs_PutUser if the
> refCount drops to zero (possibly only under the same conditions as the
> checks in afs_GCUserData)? I'm not sure I get the rationale for  
> having a
> separate occasional GC for the linked list.

We need to be very careful what we do in afs_pag_destroy(), as we  
don't have much control over the context in which it's called. In  
theory, we shouldn't do anything that sleeps - our caller may hold a  
spinlock. I'd be very wary of adding additional logic to that code,  
unless we change the way that the user list is protected.

S.