On 7.6.2013 16:51, Rich Megginson wrote:
On 06/07/2013 08:44 AM, Petr Spacek wrote:
> On 7.6.2013 16:11, Rich Megginson wrote:
>> On 06/07/2013 05:42 AM, Petr Spacek wrote:
>>> I would like to get opinions from 389 gurus to following problem.
>>>
>>> I have an application (DNS server), which needs to read content of whole one
>>> sub-tree (cn=dns, dc=test) and keep it synchronized.
>>>
>>> The work flow is:
>>> 1) Application (DNS server) starts
>>> 2) Application reads all existing data out from the sub-tree
>>> 3) Application does /something/ with the existing data and starts replying
>>> to application clients
>>> 4) Sub-tree has to be kept in sync with LDAP server, i.e. updates from LDAP
>>> server should be incrementally applied to the 'state' inside the
application
>>>
>>>
>>> The problem with persistent search is that it doesn't offer any reliable
>>> 'signal' that step (2) ended. The search is just running for infinite
time
>>> and I can't find any signal that all existing entries were read already
and
>>> now the application will get only Entry Change Notifications.
>>>
>>>
>>> Basically, I'm looking for something like LDAP syncRepl in
refreshAndPersist
>>> mode with no cookie (RFC 4533 section 1.3.2 and section 3.4).
>>>
>>>
>>> I know that Entry Change Notification from persistent search contains bit
>>> field which denotes if the entry was added/modified/deleted/nothing (i.e.
>>> not modified, just read). Unfortunately, this bit field can't be used
for
>>> *reliable* detection that all existing entries were read.
>>>
>>>
>>> Could this 'hack' work reliably?
>>> 1) Start persistent search (in separate application thread), but suspend
>>> result processing.
>>> 2) In another application thread, do the normal sub-tree search on the same
>>> sub-tree. Normal search will be started *after* the persistent search.
>>> 3) Process all results from normal search first
>>> 4) Do /something application specific/
>>> 5) Start processing updates from persistent search
>>>
>>> In my application I can cope with duplicates, when 'normal' search
returned
>>> entry cn=xyz and the persistent search returned the same entry cn=xyz again.
>>
>> Could you use entryUSN? For example - keep searching until the entryUSN in
>> the entry is the same as the global entryUSN, then fallback to persistent
>> search?
>
> Could you elaborate it a bit more, please? I'm not sure if I understood.
> What exactly 'global' entryUSN means?
> Do you mean 'lastUSN' value on particular server?
Yes.
> Can it work on server where modification are scarce? (Note that I do
> sub-tree search on subset of the whole database.)
Not sure what you mean. What difference does it make if modifications are
scarce? By modifications do you mean adds/mods/modrdn/delete - that is, any
update?
I need to operate on one sub-tree in the database, not the whole database. I
think that for this reason I can't depend on fact that sub-tree search will
encounter entryUSN == lastUSN.
This will never happen if 'my' sub-tree wasn't modified as the last part of
sub-tree, right? (That is why spoke about 'scarce' updates, and yes, update =
any modification in given sub-tree.)
Did I misunderstand something?
> I considered normal search followed by persistent search with
entryUSN
> filter, but IMHO it will not work with entry deletion.
>
> For example:
> 1) Start normal search and request entryUSN attribute (among others)
> 2) Process all results from search and compute max(entryUSN)
> 3) Start persistent search with filter (entryUSN > computedMaxValue)
>
> I can see the race condition if an entry is deleted between steps (2) and (3).
>
> That is exactly what I tried to solve with 'parallel' searches, i.e.
> effectively avoid any time gap between steps (2) and (3).
I'm not sure what difference it makes if the update is a deletion or not, but
yes, there is a race condition.
>
>
> Of course, I could read entryUSN during normal and persistent search and
> then skip all results from persistent search with entryUSN <
> computedMaxValue. Is that what you meant?
Yes.
Anyway, do you think that the approach with 'normal & persistent searches in
parallel' is enough to avoid the race condition? I.e. Does it prevent me from
missing any update? (Let's suppose that duplicate-detection is solved :-))
>>> I can see another option:
>>> To implement 389 plugin which will provide (very partial) support for RFC
>>> 4533. The idea is to implement only state-less pieces (no cookies) and
>>> return some error when client attempts to use a cookie.
>>
>> This would also likely use entryUSN for the cookie, internallly.
> Yes, that was also my idea, but I don't want to implement the 'state-full
> part' of the RFC in all it's complexity. Now I'm interested only in
> detection that all existing entries were read :-)
Sure, but it would be nice to implement the whole syncrepl protocol if you're
going to have to implement it partially anyway.
I definitely agree, but
unfortunately, I'm tasked with something different and
this syncRepl episode is only the small piece of the whole story :-)
>>> Could somebody judge how difficult it can be? From my
(naive) point of view
>>> are state-less parts of RFC 4533 only 'persistent search encapsulated in
>>> another LDAP controls'.
--
Petr^2 Spacek