[OpenAFS-devel] Re: Breaking callbacks on unlink

[Andrew Deason]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:40:36 -0800
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:

> I need to be able to install AFS and have it work.  If I can't do
> that, I will install something other than AFS.  It really is that
> simple.

Sure; same argument from my side.

> I have not spent anywhere near as much time inside the code as you
> have, and I *do* agree that my theory that idledead is a significant
> contributing factor is simply a theory, and I could be wrong.

Oh, to be clear, I'm not trying to say you're wrong about _that_. It
could very much be contributing to this, although I don't think it's
possible to be the only cause; idledead should only change anything if
you have a delay of e.g. 50 seconds; it's not going to cause that 50
second delay in the first place.

If you want my opinion on what the _reason_ is, it's just that your high
rate of pag generation and high rate of writes is more than the
fileserver can handle, which is why I only ever see this stuff come from
you (at least, to this degree). or, something in that area. I've
mentioned a few times a few different changes that I think can alleviate
some of this, but... I never heard anything back about them, so it
didn't seem like you were interested or that it wasn't that important.

> OpenAFS, as presently constructed, through only some fault of the
> OpenAFS development community (most of the problem was pre-existing,
> and much of it dated from the pthreads integration inside
> Transarc/IBM), fails most of the markers that I would look for in
> evaluating code for robustness.  I believe it's getting better, but
> it's a *long* way from good.  I realize that you're hearing from other
> people who are advocating for flexibility and configurability.  Think
> of me as a passionate advocate for robustness, because that's *my*
> squeaky wheel right now.

Yes, I can understand that, and I can understand why that is what you're
advocating. But when I see you talk on this list, I see you as a
gatekeeper, and so when I see objection to runtime options, I see that
as something that will become "openafs.org policy" or something if I
don't object.

If you want to try to say that we shouldn't add anything more until
these problems are solved, then... well, I don't think you're trying to
advocate that everyone should stop what they're doing just to help you
:) but that at least puts a kind of limit on things.

-- 
Andrew Deason
adeason@sinenomine.net