Re: [Netconf] Is there a problem with confirmed commits?

["Jonathan Hansford" <[e-mail]>]

The candidate can be locked because the changes have been committed, 
just not confirmed.

------ Original Message ------
From: "Martin Bjorklund" <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Sent: 14/01/2019 13:23:42
Subject: Re: [Netconf] Is there a problem with confirmed commits?

>"Jonathan Hansford" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>  Hi,
>>
>>  No one seems to be responding to my email and proposed erratum around
>>  the subject of confirmed commits (apart from Martin), but I would
>>  really like to know it I am missing something here. As far as I can
>>  tell, session termination during a confirmed commit leads to
>>  unpredictable behaviour and I would like to know whether anyone is
>>  using confirmed commits and how (if at all) they address the issues
>>  outlined below. My assumptions are that locks are used and
>>  :writable-running is not supported.
>>
>>  If the <candidate> and <running> configuration datastores are locked
>>  to prevent concurrent access, and a confirmed commit sequence is
>>  interrupted by the session terminating, the locks will automatically
>>  be released but the server MUST NOT accept a lock on <running> from
>>  any session if another session has an ongoing confirmed
>>  <commit>. Consequently, after session termination no client can
>>  acquire a <lock> on <running>, not even the one that initiated the
>>  confirmed <commit>, until after the confirmed <commit> has timed
>>  out. However, if the confirmed <commit> included the <persist>
>>  parameter, the original client could still issue a <commit> using the
>>  persist-id to complete the sequence prior to the timeout, even without
>>  a lock.
>>
>>  Of course, the problem now is the race for the new lock on
>>  <candidate>.
>
>According to 7.5, a lock is not granted if:
>
>       *  The target configuration is <candidate>, it has already been
>          modified, and these changes have not been committed or rolled
>          back.
>
>       *  The target configuration is <running>, and another NETCONF
>          session has an ongoing confirmed commit (Section 8.4).
>
>So I think that it will not be possible to take the lock on either
>datastore in this situation.
>
>
>/martin
>
>
>>  If the original client is successful then all is
>>  good. But if a new client locks <candidate> before the timeout on the
>>  confirmed commit, whether or not they precede <lock> with
>>  <discard-changes>, <candidate> will be the same as <running> and the
>>  new client will pick up everything from the previous session. However,
>>  the client won’t be able to lock <running> until after the timeout, at
>>  which point <running> reverts but <candidate> still represents the
>>  previous session. If the client tries to lock <candidate> after the
>>  timeout, <running> will have reverted and the lock will only be
>>  granted after a <discard-changes> which will cause the <candidate> to
>>  revert. So, depending on when the lock on <candidate> occurs relative
>>  to the confirmed commit timeout, the client could be editing
>>  <candidate> in one of two states. Further, before the timeout on the
>>  confirmed commit, even if the new client has locked candidate, the
>>  original client could still issue a confirming commit (they don’t need
>>  a lock on <candidate> to do so) which would persistently commit any
>>  edits made by the new client. NOTE: it is not the use of the
>>  persist-id that introduces this behaviour; a new client would have the
>>  same problem even if a confirmed commit was not intended to persist
>>  beyond a session termination.
>>
>>  If the server also supports the :startup capability then, if the
>>  session termination was due to the server rebooting, the behaviour
>>  above would be further complicated by <running> now containing the
>>  configuration from the <startup> configuration datastore.
>>
>>  Am I right?
>>
>>  Jonathan
>>
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