[cks-devl] Sync thoughts (fwd)

[V Alex Brennen]

Some on John's thoughts from back in July...


        - VAB


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:36:03 -0500
From: John Goerzen <address@hidden>
To: V. Alex Brennen <address@hidden>
Subject: Sync thoughts

Hi,

Looking over some code and data structures to do syncing, some
problems occured to me:

1. The sync code has no provision for dealing with servers that are
down.  It is an all or nothing thing -- if some servers are
unreachable at the moment, the key may not be synced to them

2. There is no way of using something analogous to the Path line in
Usenet posts -- that is, "I've seen this update already, I'll discard
it."  Imagine a system where some nodes do not talk to others, so when
system A syncs key 12345678 to system B, system B syncs that key to
system C, which might then send it to D.  But what if D is configured
to sync to A?  Would we have a nasty loop here?

Just thinking... I haven't read the code real closely yet, so maybe
you've thought of these things already, but I figure I ought to bring
them up at least.

-- John