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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-710?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#action_12466749
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Marvin Humphrey commented on LUCENE-710:
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I found a flaw in my plan. If the read locks are always applied, they will
slow deletion of obsolete segments for everybody where delete-on-last-close
currently works as intended.  Right now, the files are unlinked and disappear
as soon as the last reader holding them open goes away.  With read locks, the
unlink op wouldn't take place if a reader was open.

I also spent a good bit of time yesterday further researching the subtleties
of locks over NFS.  Summing up: flock can work, but dot-lock files are more
reliable.

So, new proposal: 

Add a new public method IndexReader.aquireReadLock(String hostId), which would
write a dot-lock file to the index directory with hostId, a pid, and an
incrementing integer spliced into the file name.  The relevant segments_N file
name would be written to the lockfile.  Calling it would only be necessary on 
NFS,
and an exception would occur if the attempt to create the lockfile
failed.

The deletions policy would work as in my earlier proposal, and the user
wouldn't have to grok its innards.  Troubleshooting stale lockfiles
by snooping the index directory contents would be straightforward and
intuitive.

We might want aquireReadLock() to automatically zap any locks associated with
hostId for which the pid couldn't be found, or we might want to break that out
into another method.



> Implement "point in time" searching without relying on filesystem semantics
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LUCENE-710
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-710
>             Project: Lucene - Java
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Index
>    Affects Versions: 2.1
>            Reporter: Michael McCandless
>         Assigned To: Michael McCandless
>            Priority: Minor
>
> This was touched on in recent discussion on dev list:
>   http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-dev/41700#41700
> and then more recently on the user list:
>   http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-user/42088
> Lucene's "point in time" searching currently relies on how the
> underlying storage handles deletion files that are held open for
> reading.
> This is highly variable across filesystems.  For example, UNIX-like
> filesystems usually do "close on last delete", and Windows filesystem
> typically refuses to delete a file open for reading (so Lucene retries
> later).  But NFS just removes the file out from under the reader, and
> for that reason "point in time" searching doesn't work on NFS
> (see LUCENE-673 ).
> With the lockless commits changes (LUCENE-701 ), it's quite simple to
> re-implement "point in time searching" so as to not rely on filesystem
> semantics: we can just keep more than the last segments_N file (as
> well as all files they reference).
> This is also in keeping with the design goal of "rely on as little as
> possible from the filesystem".  EG with lockless we no longer re-use
> filenames (don't rely on filesystem cache being coherent) and we no
> longer use file renaming (because on Windows it can fails).  This
> would be another step of not relying on semantics of "deleting open
> files".  The less we require from filesystem the more portable Lucene
> will be!
> Where it gets interesting is what "policy" we would then use for
> removing segments_N files.  The policy now is "remove all but the last
> one".  I think we would keep this policy as the default.  Then you
> could imagine other policies:
>   * Keep past N day's worth
>   * Keep the last N
>   * Keep only those in active use by a reader somewhere (note: tricky
>     how to reliably figure this out when readers have crashed, etc.)
>   * Keep those "marked" as rollback points by some transaction, or
>     marked explicitly as a "snaphshot".
>   * Or, roll your own: the "policy" would be an interface or abstract
>     class and you could make your own implementation.
> I think for this issue we could just create the framework
> (interface/abstract class for "policy" and invoke it from
> IndexFileDeleter) and then implement the current policy (delete all
> but most recent segments_N) as the default policy.
> In separate issue(s) we could then create the above more interesting
> policies.
> I think there are some important advantages to doing this:
>   * "Point in time" searching would work on NFS (it doesn't now
>     because NFS doesn't do "delete on last close"; see LUCENE-673 )
>     and any other Directory implementations that don't work
>     currently.
>   * Transactional semantics become a possibility: you can set a
>     snapshot, do a bunch of stuff to your index, and then rollback to
>     the snapshot at a later time.
>   * If a reader crashes or machine gets rebooted, etc, it could choose
>     to re-open the snapshot it had previously been using, whereas now
>     the reader must always switch to the last commit point.
>   * Searchers could search the same snapshot for follow-on actions.
>     Meaning, user does search, then next page, drill down (Solr),
>     drill up, etc.  These are each separate trips to the server and if
>     searcher has been re-opened, user can get inconsistent results (=
>     lost trust).  But with, one series of search interactions could
>     explicitly stay on the snapshot it had started with.

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