Support running without DIRECT IO

[rethinkdb]

Support running without DIRECT IO

[frank-trampe]

What was the original reason for having the software fail on lack of O_DIRECT? Was it merely to save time implementing the fallback, or are there things that fail when the file is opened without it?

[frank-trampe]

Let me rephrase that so that it doesn't sound like I don't know the importance of O_DIRECT for a database. What was the original reason for not allowing a bypass? Was it effort required to implement the fallback in disk.cc, things that broke elsewhere, or fear of cache crowding and other serious system performance problems?

[coffeemug]

Basically, we just didn't think about it :)

[frank-trampe]

So the low-level support in disk.cc seems to be present after all, just not commented. The argument is_really_direct to linux_file_t::linux_file_t (which is not Linux-specific anymore) controls whether one requests O_DIRECT or F_NOCACHE. All that we need to do is to implement a choice between the typedefs direct_file_t and nondirect_file_t in log_serializer.cc. We could pass the information to that point (from command_line stuff) via extra function arguments (either a session object or a simple flag for this option) or via a global variable. What would be preferable here?

[coffeemug]

I haven't looked at this stuff in a while, but here are two problems that I can think of off the top of my head:

• F_NOCACHE may or may not be supported on all platforms
• O_DIRECT implies that when one writes a block, the function does not return until the disk driver responds that the block has been committed to disk. This isn't the case without O_DIRECT, and may or may not be the case with F_NOCACHE. We need this behavior for sane operation, so we'll have to make sure it's replicated when O_DIRECT is off (one way to do that is to throw in fsyncs)

[frank-trampe]

• F_NOCACHE is just for the Macintosh (or whatever you call a sharp-edged aluminum computer that does not support O_DIRECT).
• I thought that we were willing to allow the user to bypass the disk commit safeguards in this case since it was just for testing. I can examine options for verifying a commit to disk without O_DIRECT if you like.

[frank-trampe]

As it turns out, O_DIRECT does not provide guarantees about data commits like O_SYNC. Would we also want to provide an O_SYNC option?

[srh]

We want O_DSYNC (which Linux allegedly treats O_SYNC as, anyway).

We warn the user when O_DIRECT doesn't work and pass O_DSYNC in any case.

This is currently in code review 134.

[coffeemug]

What do we do in OSX for sync?

[srh]

Nothing yet. If we want proper syncing in OS X we can follow up each write() call with fcntl(fd, F_FULLFSYNC).

[coffeemug]

@srh -- presumably we'd only need to do it twice -- once before writing the metablock, and once after.

[srh]

@coffeemug - I'm going to do F_FULLFSYNC in the I/O layer after every write call. This allegedly replicates O_DSYNC behavior (except that it presumably also syncs file metadata). Also, there's no reason it would perform worse (except for the relatively negligible cost of an extra syscall on a thread in the i/o pool) than some specific fsync calls made in the serializer.

[srh]

This is fixed, with F_FULLFSYNC and O_DSYNC options enabled.

[coffeemug]

@srh -- could you please specify review number and commit number?

[coffeemug]

@srh -- ping -- could you specify review number and commit number? What is the warning message the users get if DIRECT_IO isn't available?