RE: back-bdb DB_RECOVER and soft restart

["Howard Chu" <hyc@highlandsun.com>]

(By the way, read unqualified "db" or "database" below as "BDB environment"
...)

I of course think this is an excellent solution and will take care of a lot
of headaches from leftover BDB locks and such after a crash.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Hardin [mailto:mhardin@symas.com]

> This is a followup to the back-bdb DB_RECOVER thread from
> last year. We want
> to add automatic recovery to back-bdb and propose to solve
> the problem this
> way.
>
> The modifications that follow involve changes to the back-bdb
> initialization
> and shutdown routines. They are intended to detect an
> improper shutdown of
> back-bdb and initiate a recovery only when there are no other
> instances of
> back-bdb accessing the
> db. Further, additional instances of back-bdb (i.e., tools) will not
> complete their initialization until the the db recovery has
> been completed.
>
> The mechanism uses a combination of lock files and file
> locks, and works as
> follows:
>
> On startup each instance of back-bdb will do the following:
>
> 1. Open the lock file in the db directory called slaplock
> with O_CREAT.
>    This step is only to make sure there is something to lock,
>    and it doesn't matter if the file already exists.
> 2. Attempt to place a write lock on the lock file. If the lock fails,
>    it means another back-bdb instance is is either recovering  the db
>    or using it, so proceed to step 5.
> 3. Stat the lock file. If the file size is non zero, it means that
>    no other back-bdb instances are using the db and that the db
>    was not properly closed, so perform the recovery.
> 4. Write one byte to the file (one variation is to write the
> PID into it
>    so one can tell by inspection which process did it).
> 5. Wait for a read lock on the lock file and leave it there for the
>    life of the back-bdb instance.
> 6. Open the db and finish initialization.
>
>
> On bdb shutdown, each instance of back-bdb will do the following:
>
> 1. Attempt to place a write lock on the lock file. If it fails,
>    it means that other back-bdb instances are using the db file,
>    so go to step 3.
> 2. Perform the DB shutdown and then truncate the lock file to
>    0 bytes. That signals that the db was shut down cleanly.
> 3. Close the lock file and exit normally.
>
>
> This appears to cleanly and portably solve the problem of back-bdb
> DB_RECOVER and soft restart. In addition to slapd itself, any
> of the slap
> tools that opens a db that was shutdown uncleanly will initiate a
> DB_RECOVER, but only if they are the only process accessing
> the database.
> Once recovery is complete, then operation proceeds as normal.
>
> Comments?
>
> Matthew Hardin
> Symas Corporation
> Packaged, certified, and supported LDAP software:
> http://www.symas.net/download