We keep the practice of keeping the compiler up to date, pointing to the
latest release. This is done by many other projects in the Rust
ecosystem as well.
The 1.87.0 release marks 10 years of Rust.
[Announcement blog
post](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/05/15/Rust-1.87.0/)
Prior update was in #11431
# Problem
Before this PR, `test_pageserver_catchup_while_compute_down` would
occasionally fail due to scary-looking WARN log line
```
WARN ephemeral_file_buffered_writer{...}:flush_attempt{attempt=1}: \
error flushing buffered writer buffer to disk, retrying after backoff err=Operation canceled (os error 125)
```
After lengthy investigation, the conclusion is that this is likely due
to a kernel bug related due to io_uring async workers (io-wq) and
signals.
The main indicator is that the error only ever happens in correlation
with pageserver shtudown when SIGTERM is received.
There is a fix that is merged in 6.14
kernels (`io-wq: backoff when retrying worker creation`).
However, even when I revert that patch, the issue is not reproducible
on 6.14, so, it remains a speculation.
It was ruled out that the ECANCELED is due to the executor thread
exiting before the async worker starts processing the operation.
# Solution
The workaround in this issue is to retry the operation on ECANCELED
once.
Retries are safe because the low-level io_engine operations are
idempotent.
(We don't use O_APPEND and I can't think of another flag that would make
the APIs covered by this patch not idempotent.)
# Testing
With this PR, the warn! log no longer happens on [my reproducer
setup](https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/11446#issuecomment-2843015111).
And the new rate-limited `info!`-level log line informing about the
internal retry shows up instead, as expected.
# Refs
- fixes https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/11446
# Problem
The Pageserver read path exclusively uses direct IO if
`virtual_file_io_mode=direct`.
The write path is half-finished. Here is what the various writing
components use:
|what|buffering|flags on <br/>`v_f_io_mode`<br/>=`buffered`|flags on
<br/>`virtual_file_io_mode`<br/>=`direct`|
|-|-|-|-|
|`DeltaLayerWriter`| BlobWriter<BUFFERED=true> | () | () |
|`ImageLayerWriter`| BlobWriter<BUFFERED=false> | () | () |
|`download_layer_file`|BufferedWriter|()|()|
|`InMemoryLayer`|BufferedWriter|()|O_DIRECT|
The vehicle towards direct IO support is `BufferedWriter` which
- largely takes care of O_DIRECT alignment & size-multiple requirements
- double-buffering to mask latency
`DeltaLayerWriter`, `ImageLayerWriter` use `blob_io::BlobWriter` , which
has neither of these.
# Changes
## High-Level
At a high-level this PR makes the following primary changes:
- switch the two layer writer types to use `BufferedWriter` & make
sensitive to `virtual_file_io_mode` (via open_with_options_**v2**)
- make `download_layer_file` sensitive to `virtual_file_io_mode` (also
via open_with_options_**v2**)
- add `virtual_file_io_mode=direct-rw` as a feature gate
- we're hackish-ly piggybacking on OpenOptions's ask for write access
here
- this means with just `=direct` InMemoryLayer reads and writes no
longer uses O_DIRECT
- this is transitory and we'll remove the `direct-rw` variant once the
rollout is complete
(The `_v2` APIs for opening / creating VirtualFile are those that are
sensitive to `virtual_file_io_mode`)
The result is:
|what|uses <br/>`BufferedWriter`|flags on
<br/>`v_f_io_mode`<br/>=`buffered`|flags on
<br/>`v_f_io_mode`<br/>=`direct`|flags on
<br/>`v_f_io_mode`<br/>=`direct-rw`|
|-|-|-|-|-|
|`DeltaLayerWriter`| ~~Blob~~BufferedWriter | () | () | O_DIRECT |
|`ImageLayerWriter`| ~~Blob~~BufferedWriter | () | () | O_DIRECT |
|`download_layer_file`|BufferedWriter|()|()|O_DIRECT|
|`InMemoryLayer`|BufferedWriter|()|~~O_DIRECT~~()|O_DIRECT|
## Code-Level
The main change is:
- Switch `blob_io::BlobWriter` away from its own buffering method to use
`BufferedWriter`.
Additional prep for upholding `O_DIRECT` requirements:
- Layer writer `finish()` methods switched to use IoBufferMut for
guaranteed buffer address alignment. The size of the buffers is PAGE_SZ
and thereby implicitly assumed to fulfill O_DIRECT requirements.
For the hacky feature-gating via `=direct-rw`:
- Track `OpenOptions::write(true|false)` in a field; bunch of mechanical
churn.
- Consolidate the APIs in which we "open" or "create" VirtualFile for
better overview over which parts of the code use the `_v2` APIs.
Necessary refactorings & infra work:
- Add doc comments explaining how BufferedWriter ensures that writes are
compliant with O_DIRECT alignment & size constraints. This isn't new,
but should be spelled out.
- Add the concept of shutdown modes to `BufferedWriter::shutdown` to
make writer shutdown adhere to these constraints.
- The `PadThenTruncate` mode might not be necessary in practice because
I believe all layer files ever written are sized in multiples `PAGE_SZ`
and since `PAGE_SZ` is larger than the current alignment requirements
(512/4k depending on platform), it won't be necesary to pad.
- Some test (I believe `round_trip_test_compressed`?) required it though
- [ ] TODO: decide if we want to accept that complexity; if we do then
address TODO in the code to separate alignment requirement from buffer
capacity
- Add `set_len` (=`ftruncate`) VirtualFile operation to support the
above.
- Allow `BufferedWriter` to start at a non-zero offset (to make room for
the summary block).
Cleanups unlocked by this change:
- Remove non-positional APIs from VirtualFile (e.g. seek, write_full,
read_full)
Drive-by fixes:
- PR https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/11585 aimed to run unit
tests for all `virtual_file_io_mode` combinations but didn't because of
a missing `_` in the env var.
# Performance
This section assesses this PR's impact on deployments with current
production setting (`=direct`) and anticipated impact of switching to
(`=direct-rw`).
For `DeltaLayerWriter`, `=direct` should remain unchanged to slightly
improved on throughput because the `BlobWriter`'s buffer had the same
size as the `BufferedWriter`'s buffer, but it didn't have the
double-buffering that `BufferedWriter` has.
The `=direct-rw` enables direct IO; throughput should not be suffering
because of double-buffering; benchmarks will show if this is true.
The `ImageLayerWriter` was previously not doing any buffering
(`BUFFERED=false`).
It went straight to issuing the IO operation to the underlying
VirtualFile and the buffering was done by the kernel.
The switch to `BufferedWriter` under `=direct` adds an additional memcpy
into the BufferedWriter's buffer.
We will win back that memcpy when enabling direct IO via `=direct-rw`.
A nice win from the switch to `BufferedWriter` is that ImageLayerWriter
performs >=16x fewer write operations to VirtualFile (the BlobWriter
performs one write per len field and one write per image value).
This should save low tens of microseconds of CPU overhead from doing all
these syscalls/io_uring operations, regardless of `=direct` or
`=direct-rw`.
Aside from problems with alignment, this write frequency without
double-buffering is prohibitive if we actually have to wait for the
disk, which is what will happen when we enable direct IO via
(`=direct-rw`).
Throughput should not be suffering because of BufferedWrite's
double-buffering; benchmarks will show if this is true.
`InMemoryLayer` at `=direct` will flip back to using buffered IO but
remain on BufferedWriter.
The buffered IO adds back one memcpy of CPU overhead.
Throughput should not suffer and will might improve on
not-memory-pressured Pageservers but let's remember that we're doing the
whole direct IO thing to eliminate global memory pressure as a source of
perf variability.
## bench_ingest
I reran `bench_ingest` on `im4gn.2xlarge` and `Hetzner AX102`.
Use `git diff` with `--word-diff` or similar to see the change.
General guidance on interpretation:
- immediate production impact of this PR without production config
change can be gauged by comparing the same `io_mode=Direct`
- end state of production switched over to `io_mode=DirectRw` can be
gauged by comparing old results' `io_mode=Direct` to new results'
`io_mode=DirectRw`
Given above guidance, on `im4gn.2xlarge`
- immediate impact is a significant improvement in all cases
- end state after switching has same significant improvements in all
cases
- ... except `ingest/io_mode=DirectRw volume_mib=128 key_size_bytes=8192
key_layout=Sequential write_delta=Yes` which only achieves `238 MiB/s`
instead of `253.43 MiB/s`
- this is a 6% degradation
- this workload is typical for image layer creation
# Refs
- epic https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/9868
- stacked atop
- preliminary refactor https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/11549
- bench_ingest overhaul https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/11667
- derived from https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/10063
Co-authored-by: Yuchen Liang <yuchen@neon.tech>
Updates storage components to edition 2024. We like to stay on the
latest edition if possible. There is no functional changes, however some
code changes had to be done to accommodate the edition's breaking
changes.
The PR has two commits:
* the first commit updates storage crates to edition 2024 and appeases
`cargo clippy` by changing code. i have accidentially ran the formatter
on some files that had other edits.
* the second commit performs a `cargo fmt`
I would recommend a closer review of the first commit and a less close
review of the second one (as it just runs `cargo fmt`).
part of https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/10918
This PR simplifies the pageserver configuration parsing as follows:
* introduce the `pageserver_api::config::ConfigToml` type
* implement `Default` for `ConfigToml`
* use serde derive to do the brain-dead leg-work of processing the toml
document
* use `serde(default)` to fill in default values
* in `pageserver` crate:
* use `toml_edit` to deserialize the pageserver.toml string into a
`ConfigToml`
* `PageServerConfig::parse_and_validate` then
* consumes the `ConfigToml`
* destructures it exhaustively into its constituent fields
* constructs the `PageServerConfig`
The rules are:
* in `ConfigToml`, use `deny_unknown_fields` everywhere
* static default values go in `pageserver_api`
* if there cannot be a static default value (e.g. which default IO
engine to use, because it depends on the runtime), make the field in
`ConfigToml` an `Option`
* if runtime-augmentation of a value is needed, do that in
`parse_and_validate`
* a good example is `virtual_file_io_engine` or `l0_flush`, both of
which need to execute code to determine the effective value in
`PageServerConf`
The benefits:
* massive amount of brain-dead repetitive code can be deleted
* "unused variable" compile-time errors when removing a config value,
due to the exhaustive destructuring in `parse_and_validate`
* compile-time errors guide you when adding a new config field
Drawbacks:
* serde derive is sometimes a bit too magical
* `deny_unknown_fields` is easy to miss
Future Work / Benefits:
* make `neon_local` use `pageserver_api` to construct `ConfigToml` and
write it to `pageserver.toml`
* This provides more type safety / coompile-time errors than the current
approach.
### Refs
Fixes#3682
### Future Work
* `remote_storage` deser doesn't reject unknown fields
https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/8915
* clean up `libs/pageserver_api/src/config.rs` further
* break up into multiple files, at least for tenant config
* move `models` as appropriate / refine distinction between config and
API models / be explicit about when it's the same
* use `pub(crate)` visibility on `mod defaults` to detect stale values
The `tokio_epoll_uring::Slice` / `tokio_uring::Slice` type is weird.
The new `FullSlice` newtype is better. See the doc comment for details.
The naming is not ideal, but we'll clean that up in a future refactoring
where we move the `FullSlice` into `tokio_epoll_uring`. Then, we'll do
the following:
* tokio_epoll_uring::Slice is removed
* `FullSlice` becomes `tokio_epoll_uring::IoBufView`
* new type `tokio_epoll_uring::IoBufMutView` for the current
`tokio_epoll_uring::Slice<IoBufMut>`
Context
-------
I did this work in preparation for
https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/pull/8537.
There, I'm changing the type that the `inmemory_layer.rs` passes to
`DeltaLayerWriter::put_value_bytes` and thus it seemed like a good
opportunity to make this cleanup first.
## Problem
Some developers build on MacOS, which doesn't have io_uring.
## Summary of changes
- Add `io_engine_for_bench`, which on linux will give io_uring or panic
if it's unavailable, and on MacOS will always panic.
We do not want to run such benchmarks with StdFs: the results aren't
interesting, and will actively waste the time of any developers who
start investigating performance before they realize they're using a
known-slow I/O backend.
Why not just conditionally compile this benchmark on linux only? Because
even on linux, I still want it to refuse to run if it can't get
io_uring.
part of https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/7418
I reviewed how the VirtualFile API's `read` methods look like and came
to the conclusion that we've been using `IoBufMut` / `BoundedBufMut` /
`Slice` wrong.
This patch rectifies the situation.
# Change 1: take `tokio_epoll_uring::Slice` in the read APIs
Before, we took an `IoBufMut`, which is too low of a primitive and while
it _seems_ convenient to be able to pass in a `Vec<u8>` without any
fuzz, it's actually very unclear at the callsite that we're going to
fill up that `Vec` up to its `capacity()`, because that's what
`IoBuf::bytes_total()` returns and that's what
`VirtualFile::read_exact_at` fills.
By passing a `Slice` instead, a caller that "just wants to read into a
`Vec`" is forced to be explicit about it, adding either `slice_full()`
or `slice(x..y)`, and these methods panic if the read is outside of the
bounds of the `Vec::capacity()`.
Last, passing slices is more similar to what the `std::io` APIs look
like.
# Change 2: fix UB in `virtual_file_io_engine=std-fs`
While reviewing call sites, I noticed that the
`io_engine::IoEngine::read_at` method for `StdFs` mode has been
constructing an `&mut[u8]` from raw parts that were uninitialized.
We then used `std::fs::File::read_exact` to initialize that memory, but,
IIUC we must not even be constructing an `&mut[u8]` where some of the
memory isn't initialized.
So, stop doing that and add a helper ext trait on `Slice` to do the
zero-initialization.
# Change 3: eliminate `read_exact_at_n`
The `read_exact_at_n` doesn't make sense because the caller can just
1. `slice = buf.slice()` the exact memory it wants to fill
2. `slice = read_exact_at(slice)`
3. `buf = slice.into_inner()`
Again, the `std::io` APIs specify the length of the read via the Rust
slice length.
We should do the same for the owned buffers IO APIs, i.e., via
`Slice::bytes_total()`.
# Change 4: simplify filling of `PageWriteGuard`
The `PageWriteGuardBuf::init_up_to` was never necessary.
Remove it. See changes to doc comment for more details.
---
Reviewers should probably look at the added test case first, it
illustrates my case a bit.
refs https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/7136
Problem
-------
Before this PR, we were using
`tokio_epoll_uring::thread_local_system()`,
which panics on tokio_epoll_uring::System::launch() failure
As we've learned in [the
past](https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/6373#issuecomment-1905814391),
some older Linux kernels account io_uring instances as locked memory.
And while we've raised the limit in prod considerably, we did hit it
once on 2024-03-11 16:30 UTC.
That was after we enabled tokio-epoll-uring fleet-wide, but before
we had shipped release-5090 (c6ed86d3d0)
which did away with the last mass-creation of tokio-epoll-uring
instances as per
commit 3da410c8fe
Author: Christian Schwarz <christian@neon.tech>
Date: Tue Mar 5 10:03:54 2024 +0100
tokio-epoll-uring: use it on the layer-creating code paths (#6378)
Nonetheless, it highlighted that panicking in this situation is probably
not ideal, as it can leave the pageserver process in a semi-broken
state.
Further, due to low sampling rate of Prometheus metrics, we don't know
much about the circumstances of this failure instance.
Solution
--------
This PR implements a custom thread_local_system() that is
pageserver-aware
and will do the following on failure:
- dump relevant stats to `tracing!`, hopefully they will be useful to
understand the circumstances better
- if it's the locked memory failure (or any other ENOMEM): abort() the
process
- if it's ENOMEM, retry with exponential back-off, capped at 3s.
- add metric counters so we can create an alert
This makes sense in the production environment where we know that
_usually_, there's ample locked memory allowance available, and we know
the failure rate is rare.
# Problem
On-demand downloads are still using `tokio::fs`, which we know is
inefficient.
# Changes
- Add `pagebench ondemand-download-churn` to quantify on-demand download
throughput
- Requires dumping layer map, which required making `history_buffer`
impl `Deserialize`
- Implement an equivalent of `tokio::io::copy_buf` for owned buffers =>
`owned_buffers_io` module and children.
- Make layer file download sensitive to `io_engine::get()`, using
VirtualFile + above copy loop
- For this, I had to move some code into the `retry_download`, e.g.,
`sync_all()` call.
Drive-by:
- fix missing escaping in `scripts/ps_ec2_setup_instance_store`
- if we failed in retry_download to create a file, we'd try to remove
it, encounter `NotFound`, and `abort()` the process using
`on_fatal_io_error`. This PR adds treats `NotFound` as a success.
# Testing
Functional
- The copy loop is generic & unit tested.
Performance
- Used the `ondemand-download-churn` benchmark to manually test against
real S3.
- Results (public Notion page):
https://neondatabase.notion.site/Benchmarking-tokio-epoll-uring-on-demand-downloads-2024-04-15-newer-code-03c0fdc475c54492b44d9627b6e4e710?pvs=4
- Performance is equivalent at low concurrency. Jumpier situation at
high concurrency, but, still less CPU / throughput with
tokio-epoll-uring.
- It’s a win.
# Future Work
Turn the manual performance testing described in the above results
document into a performance regression test:
https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/7146
fixes https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/7116
Changes:
- refactor PageServerConfigBuilder: support not-set values
- implement runtime feature test
- use runtime feature test to determine `virtual_file_io_engine` if not
explicitly configured in the config
- log the effective engine at startup
- drive-by: improve assertion messages in `test_pageserver_init_node_id`
This needed a tiny bit of tokio-epoll-uring work, hence bumping it.
Changelog:
```
git log --no-decorate --oneline --reverse 868d2c42b5d54ca82fead6e8f2f233b69a540d3e..342ddd197a060a8354e8f11f4d12994419fff939
c7a74c6 Bump mio from 0.8.8 to 0.8.11
4df3466 Bump mio from 0.8.8 to 0.8.11 (#47)
342ddd1 lifecycle: expose `LaunchResult` enum (#49)
```
Before this PR, the layer file download code would fsync the inode after
rename instead of the timeline directory. That is not in line with what
a comment further up says we're doing, and it's obviously not achieving
the goal of making the rename durable.
part of https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/6663
part of #6663
See that epic for more context & related commits.
Problem
-------
Before this PR, the layer-file-creating code paths were using
VirtualFile, but under the hood these were still blocking system calls.
Generally this meant we'd stall the executor thread, unless the caller
"knew" and used the following pattern instead:
```
spawn_blocking(|| {
Handle::block_on(async {
VirtualFile::....().await;
})
}).await
```
Solution
--------
This PR adopts `tokio-epoll-uring` on the layer-file-creating code paths
in pageserver.
Note that on-demand downloads still use `tokio::fs`, these will be
converted in a future PR.
Design: Avoiding Regressions With `std-fs`
------------------------------------------
If we make the VirtualFile write path truly async using
`tokio-epoll-uring`, should we then remove the `spawn_blocking` +
`Handle::block_on` usage upstack in the same commit?
No, because if we’re still using the `std-fs` io engine, we’d then block
the executor in those places where previously we were protecting us from
that through the `spawn_blocking` .
So, if we want to see benefits from `tokio-epoll-uring` on the write
path while also preserving the ability to switch between
`tokio-epoll-uring` and `std-fs` , where `std-fs` will behave identical
to what we have now, we need to ***conditionally* use `spawn_blocking +
Handle::block_on`** .
I.e., in the places where we use that know, we’ll need to make that
conditional based on the currently configured io engine.
It boils down to investigating all the places where we do
`spawn_blocking(... block_on(... VirtualFile::...))`.
Detailed [write-up of that investigation in
Notion](https://neondatabase.notion.site/Surveying-VirtualFile-write-path-usage-wrt-tokio-epoll-uring-integration-spawn_blocking-Handle-bl-5dc2270dbb764db7b2e60803f375e015?pvs=4
), made publicly accessible.
tl;dr: Preceding PRs addressed the relevant call sites:
- `metadata` file: turns out we could simply remove it (#6777, #6769,
#6775)
- `create_delta_layer()`: made sensitive to `virtual_file_io_engine` in
#6986
NB: once we are switched over to `tokio-epoll-uring` everywhere in
production, we can deprecate `std-fs`; to keep macOS support, we can use
`tokio::fs` instead. That will remove this whole headache.
Code Changes In This PR
-----------------------
- VirtualFile API changes
- `VirtualFile::write_at`
- implement an `ioengine` operation and switch `VirtualFile::write_at`
to it
- `VirtualFile::metadata()`
- curiously, we only use it from the layer writers' `finish()` methods
- introduce a wrapper `Metadata` enum because `std::fs::Metadata` cannot
be constructed by code outside rust std
- `VirtualFile::sync_all()` and for completeness sake, add
`VirtualFile::sync_data()`
Testing & Rollout
-----------------
Before merging this PR, we ran the CI with both io engines.
Additionally, the changes will soak in staging.
We could have a feature gate / add a new io engine
`tokio-epoll-uring-write-path` to do a gradual rollout. However, that's
not part of this PR.
Future Work
-----------
There's still some use of `std::fs` and/or `tokio::fs` for directory
namespace operations, e.g. `std::fs::rename`.
We're not addressing those in this PR, as we'll need to add the support
in tokio-epoll-uring first. Note that rename itself is usually fast if
the directory is in the kernel dentry cache, and only the fsync after
rename is slow. These fsyncs are using tokio-epoll-uring, so, the impact
should be small.
This PR adds an API to live-reconfigure the VirtualFile io engine.
It also adds a flag to `pagebench get-page-latest-lsn`, which is where I
found this functionality to be useful: it helps compare the io engines
in a benchmark without re-compiling a release build, which took ~50s on
the i3en.3xlarge where I was doing the benchmark.
Switching the IO engine is completely safe at runtime.
