Opened at 2015-10-02T20:20:54Z

Closed at 2020-06-30T13:43:49Z

#2514 closed task (somebody else's problem)

Magic Folder: consider possible "Sorcerer's Apprentice" problems

Reported by: daira Owned by: daira
Priority: normal Milestone: undecided
Component: code-frontend-magic-folder Version: 1.10.1
Keywords: magic-folder error reliability availability denial-of-service Cc:
Launchpad Bug:

Description (last modified by daira)

File synchronization systems are potentially vulnerable to "​Sorcerer's Apprentice" problems where the work done to process a filesystem change (local or remote) triggers another filesystem change, ad infinitum.

We have already seen two bugs that could potentially cause this:

  • uploads of "foo.backup", "foo.backup.backup", etc. before #2428 was implemented
  • #2513 could also cause this problem if the node directory in question is for a server that is storing shares for the Magic Folder DMD.

Analyse the design for other similar cases.

Change History (9)

comment:1 Changed at 2015-10-02T20:21:17Z by daira

  • Description modified (diff)

comment:2 Changed at 2015-10-02T20:22:23Z by daira

  • Description modified (diff)
  • Summary changed from Magic Folder: consider possible "Magician's apprentice" problems to Magic Folder: consider possible "Sorceror's apprentice" problems

comment:3 Changed at 2015-10-02T20:23:39Z by daira

What happens if two clients of a Magic Folder have the same local directory, or one such directory is below another?

comment:4 Changed at 2015-10-02T20:50:54Z by daira

  • Description modified (diff)

comment:5 Changed at 2015-10-02T20:51:44Z by daira

  • Description modified (diff)
  • Summary changed from Magic Folder: consider possible "Sorceror's apprentice" problems to Magic Folder: consider possible "Sorcerer's Apprentice" problems

comment:6 Changed at 2015-12-07T21:03:32Z by dawuud

can we close this ticket? we might see this again in the future and it's good we've made a note of it.

comment:7 Changed at 2015-12-14T20:25:20Z by daira

No we can't close this, I haven't looked at it yet.

comment:8 Changed at 2015-12-15T16:07:00Z by daira

For example, #2640 is an instance of this kind of problem.

comment:9 Changed at 2020-06-30T13:43:49Z by exarkun

  • Resolution set to somebody else's problem
  • Status changed from new to closed

magic-folder has been split out into a separate project - ​https://github.com/leastauthority/magic-folder

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