[CASSANDRA-17707] Clarify intent when replaying hint files "partially"

• Type: Task
• Status: Triage Needed
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Platform: All
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Jeremy Hanna
• Created: 21/Jun/22 22:08
• Updated: 23/Jun/22 12:44

Description

As part of CASSANDRA-6230, hints were redesigned to come from files. As part of this, we log when the hint files are dispatched.

See https://github.com/apache/cassandra/blob/cassandra-4.1/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/hints/HintsDispatchExecutor.java#L318

logger.info("Finished hinted handoff of file {} to endpoint {}: {}, partially", descriptor.fileName(), address, hostId);

This has caused some confusion among some users who wonder whether their files were only partially replayed and whether data is consistent.

This ticket is to clarify in the log statement itself or document in the official docs what is meant by partially.

My understanding is that it's really that sometimes when shutting down, all of the file metadata isn't written so it replays the file anyway. Is that right? I wasn't sure about the dispatch failure and what that means in practice.

CC aleksey

Issue Links

• is related to: CASSANDRA-6230 Write hints to flat files instead of the system.hints