Yep, your analysis is dead-on, and is a more complete solution than what I 
propose.  Best,

Adam

On Apr 12, 2010, at 4:51 AM, Robert Newson wrote:

> Would it be safer to have a low- and high- watermark for the
> update_seq in memory? What I mean is that the db writer will never
> write out an update_seq that is N higher than the last committed one;
> if it is forced to do so, to permit a write, it then fsync's and
> resets high_seq to last_committed_seq. This way you can genuinely
> ensure that you don't reuse an update_seq. In practice we could allow
> a large delta, one that is larger than the number of fsyncs we expect
> to manage in the commit interval.
> 
> Your idea to just bump the update_seq "significantly" mostly pans out
> (I know a system that does precisely this) but it would be a data loss
> scenario if when it doesn't pan out.
> 
> B.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:54 AM, Adam Kocoloski
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Currently a DB update_seq can be reused if there's a power failure before 
>> the header is sync'ed to disk.  This adds some extra complexity and overhead 
>> to the replicator, which must confirm before saving a checkpoint that the 
>> source update_seq it is recording will not be reused later.  It does this by 
>> issuing an ensure_full_commit call to the source DB, which may be a pretty 
>> expensive operation if the source has a constant write load.
>> 
>> Should we try to fix that?  One way to do so would be start at a 
>> significantly higher update_seq than the committed one whenever the DB is 
>> opened after an "unclean" shutdown; that is, one where the DB header is not 
>> the last term stored in the file.  Although, I suppose that's not an 
>> ironclad test for data loss -- it might be the case that none of the lost 
>> updates were written to the file.  I suppose we could "bump" the update_seq 
>> on every startup.
>> 
>> Adam
>> 
>> 

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