[SPARK-22083] When dropping multiple blocks to disk, Spark should release all locks on a failure

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.1.1, 2.2.0
• Fix Version/s: 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.2.1, 2.3.0
• Component/s: Block Manager, Spark Core
• Assignee: Imran Rashid
• Reporter: Imran Rashid
• Created: 21/Sep/17 04:09
• Updated: 03/Oct/17 06:10
• Resolved: 25/Sep/17 19:09

Description

MemoryStore.evictBlocksToFreeSpace first acquires writer locks on all the blocks it intends to evict . However, if there is an exception while dropping blocks, there is no finally block to release all the locks.

If there is only one block being dropped, this isn't a problem (probably). Usually the call stack goes from MemoryStore.evictBlocksToFreeSpace --> dropBlocks --> BlockManager.dropFromMemory --> DiskStore.put. And DiskStore.put does do a removeBlock() in a finally block, which cleans up the locks.

I ran into this from the serialization issue in SPARK-21928. In that, a netty thread ends up trying to evict some blocks from memory to disk, and fails. When there is only one block that needs to be evicted, and the error occurs, there isn't any real problem; I assume that netty thread is dead, but the executor threads seem fine. However, in the cases where two blocks get dropped, one task gets completely stuck. Unfortunately I don't have a stack trace from the stuck executor, but I assume it just waits forever on this lock that never gets released.

Issue Links

• is related to: SPARK-21928 ClassNotFoundException for custom Kryo registrator class during serde in netty threads
• links to: [Github] Pull Request #19311 (squito)