Re: [Xen-devel] double or triple access to ext2, ext3 or other partitions

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 05:30:04PM +0000, Mark Williamson wrote:
> >2) at every point in the ext2 and ext3 filesystem drivers where
> >SMP-driven locking is performed, add in xen-semaphore usage and locking
> >(as well / instead).
> 
> It's not quite that simple: the ext driver in each domain will be caching 
> data related to its filesystem changes in memory.  In an SMP system, both 
> CPUs can see this cached data in memory, whereas separate virtual machines 
> cannot see what each other are caching.

 oh drat.

> Mounting the same partition is already possible using a cluster filesystem 
> (like GFS).  Cluster filesystems handle the extra locking correctly 
> because they're designed for use with multiple hosts sharing a disk (e.g. 
> over a SAN).  They'll even work with multiple writers.
 
 oooooo :)

> It is also possible to export any filesystem via NFS and have it mounted 
> by multiple domains or to have copy-on-write semantics (e.g. using LVM) so 
> that domains never see each others changes (thus circumventing the 
> problem).

 in that case, the NFS server becomes the single point of failure should
 it become attacked / compromised.

 thank you for your advice about gfs, i will most definitely investigate
 it.

 ta,

 l.



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