[ACCUMULO-575] Potential data loss when datanode fails immediately after minor compaction

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Cannot Reproduce
• Affects Version/s: 1.4.0, 1.4.1
• Component/s: tserver
• Assignee: John Vines
• Reporter: John Vines
• Created: 04/May/12 19:21
• Updated: 25/Apr/14 18:04
• Resolved: 13/Mar/13 23:42

Description

So this one popped into my head a few days ago, and I've done some research.
Context-
1. In memory map is written to an RFile.
2. yadda yadda yadda, FSOutputStream.close() is called.
3. close() calls complete() which will not return until the dfs.replication.min is reached. dfs.replication.min is by default set to 1 on systems and I don't think it's frequently configured
4. We read the file to make sure that it was written correctly (this has probably been a mitigating factor as to why we haven't run into this potential issue)
5. We write the file to the !METADATA table
6. We write minor compaction to the walog

If the datanode goes down after 6 but before the file is replicated more, then we'll have data loss. The file will be known to the namenode as corrupted, but we can't restore it automatically, because the walog has the file complete. Step 4 has probably provided enough of a time buffer to significantly decrease the possibility of this happening.

I have not explicitly tested this, but I want to test to validate the potential scenario of losing data by dropping a datanode in a multi-node system immediately after closing the FSOutputStream. If this is the case, then we may want to consider adding a wait between steps 4 and 5 that polls the namenode for replication reaching at least the max(2, # nodes).

Issue Links

• is blocked by: ACCUMULO-939 Writing to HDFS gets stuck