Re: SMP read() stopping at memory page boundaries

[Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi>]

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 17:52 +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> Sometimes read() returns only 4096 bytes. I'm locking the file, so I
> don't think this should ever happen, right?

Sorry, the problem was with file truncating so there's no bug with
locking. I didn't notice it first because it happened to work with
FreeBSD and Solaris.

Without locking there's a problem that I'd want to avoid, but I guess
it's not necessarily a bug (although it doesn't seem to happen with
FreeBSD or Solaris):

Process 1:

 - create "foo2"
 - rename() to "foo"
 - lock
 - write(4096 + 16 bytes)
 - [fsync() here doesn't change anything]
 - pwrite("1111" to offset=4096-4)
 - unlock

Process 2:

 - open("foo")
 - read(8192 bytes)

read() sometimes returns 4096 bytes but with the "1111" already included
in the data. Is there a way to avoid this without locking the file while
reading? The "1111" tries to act as a kind of a lock.

Again attached a test program, which should really do what I
intended. :)

/*
   gcc concurrency.c -o concurrency -Wall

   start two both a reader and a writer:

   ./concurrency
   ./concurrency 1
*/
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <sys/file.h>

#define MAX_PAGESIZE 8192

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	char buf[MAX_PAGESIZE*2], ones[4] = { 1, 1, 1, 1 };
	int fd, ret, pagesize;

	memset(buf, 0, sizeof(buf));

	pagesize = getpagesize();
	assert(pagesize <= MAX_PAGESIZE);

	buf[pagesize] = 'h';
	if (argc == 1) {
		printf("writing, page size = %d\n", pagesize);
		for (;;) {
			fd = open("foo2", O_RDWR | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, 0600);
			if (fd == -1) {
				perror("open()");
				return 1;
			}
			if (rename("foo2", "foo") < 0)
				perror("rename()");
			usleep(rand() % 1000);

			if (flock(fd, LOCK_EX) < 0)
				perror("flock()");
			pwrite(fd, buf, pagesize+16, 0);
			//usleep(rand() % 1000);
			//fdatasync(fd);
			pwrite(fd, ones, 4, pagesize-4);
			if (flock(fd, LOCK_UN) < 0)
				perror("flock()");
			usleep(rand() % 1000);
			close(fd);
		}
	} else {
		printf("reading, page size = %d\n", pagesize);
		for (;; close(fd)) {
			fd = open("foo", O_RDWR, 0600);
			if (fd == -1) {
				perror("open()");
				return 1;
			}

			ret = pread(fd, buf, sizeof(buf), 0);
			if (ret < pagesize) {
				if (ret > 0)
					printf("less than a page: %d\n", ret);
				continue;
			}

			if (memcmp(buf + pagesize - 4, ones, 4) == 0) {
				if (ret == pagesize) {
					printf("page size cut\n");
				} else if (buf[pagesize] != 'h') {
					printf("broken data\n");
				}
			}
		}
	}
	return 0;
}

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