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

Last modified at 2020-06-30T13:43:49Z

#2514 closed task

Magic Folder: consider possible "Sorcerer's Apprentice" problems — at Version 5

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 (5)

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
Note: See TracTickets for help on using tickets.