[Pvfs2-developers] concurrent ls and rm

[Phil Carns]

>> Unfortunately, it doesn't look like disabling the pcache made any  
>> difference.  I first tried disabling it by adding a "return 0" at  the 
>> top of the PINT_dbpf_keyval_pcache_insert() function.  I also  tried 
>> modifying the dbpf_keyval_iterate_skip_to_position() function  to not 
>> call PINT_dbpf_keyval_pcache_lookup().
>>
>> Is there anything else I could do to make sure the pcache isn't  being 
>> used, or does this indicate that the problem is elsewhere?
> 
> Yeah, must be somewhere else.  Sorry for the red herring.  Hmm.   Is  
> the file that's not getting deleted regular?  i.e.  Every file with  
> positions in multiples of 32 or something.  If we had support for *  in 
> pvfs2-rm you could verify that its not the kernel module -- the  
> position stuffing with iget4/5 in there has always seemed a bit  
> crufty.  Otherwise, I would add gossip messages to the iterate code  to 
> see what positions were being given and returned.
> 

I just stumbled on to something while trying to clean up my previous 
tests.  If I have the pcache disabled, then rm -rf of a large directory 
never works right, even if all of the other clients are idle.  It is 
possible that we have the opposite problem?  That actually the pcache 
works fine it but it is the pcache miss case that is broken?

I'll switch back and forth a couple more times to confirm, but I'm 
pretty sure this is consistent.

-Phil