[KAFKA-4545] tombstone needs to be removed after delete.retention.ms has passed after it has been cleaned

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.10.0.0, 0.11.0.0, 1.0.0
• Fix Version/s: 3.1.0
• Component/s: log
• Labels: needs-kip
• Assignee: Richard Yu
• Reporter: Jun Rao
• Created: 15/Dec/16 02:23
• Updated: 19/Oct/22 00:31
• Resolved: 19/Oct/22 00:31

Description

The algorithm for removing the tombstone in a compacted is supposed to be the following.
1. Tombstone is never removed when it's still in the dirty portion of the log.
2. After the tombstone is in the cleaned portion of the log, we further delay the removal of the tombstone by delete.retention.ms since the time the tombstone is in the cleaned portion.

Once the tombstone is in the cleaned portion, we know there can't be any message with the same key before the tombstone. Therefore, for any consumer, if it reads a non-tombstone message before the tombstone, but can read to the end of the log within delete.retention.ms, it's guaranteed to see the tombstone.

However, the current implementation doesn't seem correct. We delay the removal of the tombstone by delete.retention.ms since the last modified time of the last cleaned segment. However, the last modified time is inherited from the original segment, which could be arbitrarily old. So, the tombstone may not be preserved as long as it needs to be.

Issue Links

• is related to: KAFKA-8522 Tombstones can survive forever