[Devel] Re: [RFC v14][PATCH 00/54] Kernel based checkpoint/restart

[Louis Rilling]

On 29/04/09 18:47 -0400, Oren Laadan wrote:
> Hi Louis,
> 
> Louis Rilling wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 28/04/09 19:23 -0400, Oren Laadan wrote:
> >> Here is the latest and greatest of checkpoint/restart (c/r) patchset.
> >> The logic and image format reworked and simplified, code refactored,
> >> support for PPC, s390, sysvipc, shared memory of all sorts, namespaces
> >> (uts and ipc).
> > 
> > I should have asked before, but what are the reasons to checkpoint SYSV IPCs
> > in the same file/stream as tasks? Would it be better to checkpoint them
> > independently, like the file system state?
> > 
> > In Kerrighed we chose to checkpoint SYSV IPCs independently, a bit like the file
> > system state, because SYSV IPCs objects' lifetime do not depend on tasks
> > lifetime, and we can gain more flexibility this way. In particular we envision
> > cases in which two applications share a state in a SYSV SHM (something like a
> > producer-consumer scheme), but do not need to be checkpointed together. In such
> > a case the SYSV SHM itself could even need more high-availability (using
> > active replication) than a checkpoint/restart facility.
> > 
> 
> Thanks for the feedback, this is actually an interesting idea.
> 
> Indeed in the past I also considered SYSV IPC to be a "global" resource
> that was checkpointed before iterating through the tasks.
> 
> However, in the presence of namespaces, the lifetime of an IPC namespace
> does depend on on tasks lifetime - when the last task referring to a
> given namespace exits - that namespace is destroyed. Of course, the
> root namespace is truly global, because init(1) never exits.
> 
> What would 'checkpoint them independently' mean in this case ?

I mean that the producer and the consumer could have separate checkpointing
policies (if any), and the IPC SHM as well.

> 
> In your use-case, can you restart either application without first
> restoring the relevant SYSVIPC ?

Probably not.

> 
> Can you think of other use-cases for such a division ?  Am I right to
> guess that your use case is specific to the distributed (and SSI-)
> nature of your system ?  (Active-replication of SYSV_SHM sounds
> awfully related to DSM :)

The case of active-replication may be specific to DSM-based systems, but the
case of independent policies is already interesting in standalone boxes.

> 
> 
> While not focusing on such use cases, I want to keep the design flexible
> enough to not exclude them a-priori, and be able to address them later
> on. Indeed, the code is split such that the the function to save a given
> IPC namespace does not depend on the task that uses it. Future code
> could easily use the same functionality.
> 
> One way to be flexible to support your use case, is by having some
> mechanism in place to select whether a resource (virtually any) is
> to be chekcpointed/restored.
> 
> For example, you could imagine checkpoint(..., CHECKPOINT_SYSVIPC)
> to checkpoint (also) IPC, and not checkpoint IPC in its absence.
> 
> So normally you'd have checkpoint(..., CHECKPOINT_ALL). When you don't
> want IPC, you'd use CHECKPOINT_ALL & ~CHECKPOINT_SYSVIPC. When you
> want only IPC, you'd use CHECKPOINT_SYSVIPC only.
> 
> Same thing for restart, only that it will get trickier in the "only IPC"
> case, since you will need to tell which IPC namespace is affected.
> 
> Also, I envision a task saying cradvise(CHECKPOINT_SYSVIPC, false),
> telling the kernel to not c/r its IPC namespace. (Or any other
> resource). Again there would need to be a way to add a restored
> namespace.
> 
> Does this address your concerns ?

Yes this sounds flexible enough. Thanks for taking this into account.

Louis

-- 
Dr Louis Rilling			Kerlabs
Skype: louis.rilling			Batiment Germanium
Phone: (+33|0) 6 80 89 08 23		80 avenue des Buttes de Coesmes
http://www.kerlabs.com/			35700 Rennes
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