Description of problem:

When a write not aligned to the stripe size is done concurrently with other wirtes on a sparse file of a disperse volume, EIO error can be returned in some cases.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): mainline


How reproducible:

randomly

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a disperse volume
2. Create an empty file
3. Write to two non-overlapping areas of the file with unaligned offsets

Actual results:

In some cases the write to the lower offset fails with EIO.

Expected results:

Both writes should succeed.

Additional info:

EC doesn't allow concurrent writes on overlapping areas, they are serialized. However non-overlapping writes are serviced in parallel. When a write is not aligned, EC first needs to read the entire chunk from disk, apply the modified fragment and write it again.

Suppose we have a 4+2 disperse volume.

The problem appears on sparse files because a write to an offset implicitly creates data on offsets below it. For example, if a file is empty and we read 10 bytes from offset 10, read() will return 0 bytes. Now, if we write one byte at offset 1M and retry the same read, the system call will return 10 bytes (all containing 0's).

So if we have two writes, the first one at offset 10 and the second one at offset 1M, EC will send both in parallel because they do not overlap. However, the first one will try to read missing data from the first chunk (i.e. offset 0 to 9) to recombine the entire chunk and do the final write. This read will happen in parallel with the write to 1M. What could happen is that 3 bricks process the write before the read, and the other 3 process the read before the write. First 3 bricks will return 10 bytes, while the latest three will return 0 (because the file on the brick has not been expanded yet).

When EC tries to recombine the answers from the bricks, it can't, because it needs at least 4 consistent answers to recover the data. So this read fails with EIO error. This error is propagated to the parent write, which is aborted and EIO is returned to the application.