[HBASE-6158] Data loss if the words 'merges' or 'splits' are used as Column Family name

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.94.0
• Fix Version/s: 0.92.2, 0.94.1
• Component/s: master, regionserver
• Hadoop Flags: Reviewed
• Assignee: Aditya Kishore
• Reporter: Aditya Kishore
• Created: 04/Jun/12 18:11
• Updated: 12/Oct/12 05:36
• Resolved: 04/Jun/12 19:17

Description

If a table is creates with either 'merges' or 'splits' as one of the Column Family name it can never be flushed to the disk even though the table creation (and data population) succeeds.

The reason for this is that these two are used as temporary directory names inside the region folder or merge and splits respectively and hence conflicts with the directories created for CF with same name.

A simple fix would be to uses ".merges' and ".splits" as the working folder (patch attached). This will also be consistent with other work folder names. An alternate fix would be to declare these words (and other similar) as reserve words and throw exception when they are used. However, I do find the alternate approach as unnecessarily restrictive.