It's possible that while pack-objects is running, a
simultaneously running prune process might delete a pack
that we are interested in. Because we load the pack indices
early on, we know that the pack contains our item, but by
the time we try to open and map it, it is gone.
Since c715f78, we already protect against this in the normal
object access code path, but pack-objects accesses the packs
at a lower level. In the normal access path, we call
find_pack_entry, which will call find_pack_entry_one on each
pack index, which does the actual lookup. If it gets a hit,
we will actually open and verify the validity of the
matching packfile (using c715f78's is_pack_valid). If we
can't open it, we'll issue a warning and pretend that we
didn't find it, causing us to go on to the next pack (or on
to loose objects).
Furthermore, we will cache the descriptor to the opened
packfile. Which means that later, when we actually try to
access the object, we are likely to still have that packfile
opened, and won't care if it has been unlinked from the
filesystem.
Notice the "likely" above. If there is another pack access
in the interim, and we run out of descriptors, we could
close the pack. And then a later attempt to access the
closed pack could fail (we'll try to re-open it, of course,
but it may have been deleted). In practice, this doesn't
happen because we tend to look up items and then access them
immediately.
Pack-objects does not follow this code path. Instead, it
accesses the packs at a much lower level, using
find_pack_entry_one directly. This means we skip the
is_pack_valid check, and may end up with the name of a
packfile, but no open descriptor.
We can add the same is_pack_valid check here. Unfortunately,
the access patterns of pack-objects are not quite as nice
for keeping lookup and object access together. We look up
each object as we find out about it, and the only later when
writing the packfile do we necessarily access it. Which
means that the opened packfile may be closed in the interim.
In practice, however, adding this check still has value, for
three reasons.
1. If you have a reasonable number of packs and/or a
reasonable file descriptor limit, you can keep all of
your packs open simultaneously. If this is the case,
then the race is impossible to trigger.
2. Even if you can't keep all packs open at once, you
may end up keeping the deleted one open (i.e., you may
get lucky).
3. The race window is shortened. You may notice early that
the pack is gone, and not try to access it. Triggering
the problem without this check means deleting the pack
any time after we read the list of index files, but
before we access the looked-up objects. Triggering it
with this check means deleting the pack means deleting
the pack after we do a lookup (and successfully access
the packfile), but before we access the object. Which
is a smaller window.
Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
GIT - the stupid content tracker
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood.
- random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not
actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a
mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
- stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the
dictionary of slang.
- "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually
works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
- "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks
Git is a fast, scalable, distributed revision control system with an
unusually rich command set that provides both high-level operations
and full access to internals.
Git is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public License.
It was originally written by Linus Torvalds with help of a group of
hackers around the net. It is currently maintained by Junio C Hamano.
Please read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
See Documentation/gittutorial.txt to get started, then see
Documentation/everyday.txt for a useful minimum set of commands, and
Documentation/git-commandname.txt for documentation of each command.
If git has been correctly installed, then the tutorial can also be
read with "man gittutorial" or "git help tutorial", and the
documentation of each command with "man git-commandname" or "git help
commandname".
CVS users may also want to read Documentation/gitcvs-migration.txt
("man gitcvs-migration" or "git help cvs-migration" if git is
installed).
Many Git online resources are accessible from http://git-scm.com/
including full documentation and Git related tools.
The user discussion and development of Git take place on the Git
mailing list -- everyone is welcome to post bug reports, feature
requests, comments and patches to git@vger.kernel.org. To subscribe
to the list, send an email with just "subscribe git" in the body to
majordomo@vger.kernel.org. The mailing list archives are available at
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git and other archival sites.
The messages titled "A note from the maintainer", "What's in
git.git (stable)" and "What's cooking in git.git (topics)" and
the discussion following them on the mailing list give a good
reference for project status, development direction and
remaining tasks.
4c08018204