8701a93743
Change-Id: I003177de3a9f69c71c19eb8eaa7232785e03e669 Signed-off-by: Balazs Gibizer <gibi@redhat.com>
78 lines
3.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
78 lines
3.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
Threading model
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===============
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Eventlet
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--------
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Before the Flamingo release all OpenStack services used the *green thread*
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model of threading, implemented through using the Python
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`eventlet <http://eventlet.net/>`_ and
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`greenlet <http://packages.python.org/greenlet/>`_ libraries.
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Green threads use a cooperative model of threading: thread context
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switches can only occur when specific eventlet or greenlet library calls are
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made (e.g., sleep, certain I/O calls). From the operating system's point of
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view, each OpenStack service runs in a single thread.
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The use of green threads reduces the likelihood of race conditions, but does
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not completely eliminate them. In some cases, you may need to use the
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``@lockutils.synchronized(...)`` decorator to avoid races.
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In addition, since there is only one operating system thread, a call that
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blocks that main thread will block the entire process.
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Yielding the thread in long-running tasks
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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If a code path takes a long time to execute and does not contain any methods
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that trigger an eventlet context switch, the long-running thread will block
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any pending threads.
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This scenario can be avoided by adding calls to the eventlet sleep method
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in the long-running code path. The sleep call will trigger a context switch
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if there are pending threads, and using an argument of 0 will avoid introducing
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delays in the case that there is only a single green thread::
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from eventlet import greenthread
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...
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greenthread.sleep(0)
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In current code, time.sleep(0) does the same thing as greenthread.sleep(0) if
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time module is patched through eventlet.monkey_patch(). To be explicit, we recommend
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contributors use ``greenthread.sleep()`` instead of ``time.sleep()``.
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MySQL access and eventlet
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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There are some MySQL DB API drivers for oslo.db, like `PyMySQL`_, MySQL-python
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etc. PyMySQL is the default MySQL DB API driver for oslo.db, and it works well with
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eventlet. MySQL-python uses an external C library for accessing the MySQL database.
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Since eventlet cannot use monkey-patching to intercept blocking calls in a C library,
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so queries to the MySQL database will block the main thread of a service.
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The Diablo release contained a thread-pooling implementation that did not
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block, but this implementation resulted in a `bug`_ and was removed.
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See this `mailing list thread`_ for a discussion of this issue, including
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a discussion of the `impact on performance`_.
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.. _bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/838581
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.. _mailing list thread: https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg08118.html
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.. _impact on performance: https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg08217.html
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.. _PyMySQL: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/PyMySQL_evaluation
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Native threading
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----------------
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Since the Flamingo release OpenStack started to transition away form
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``eventlet``. During this transition Nova maintains support for running
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services with ``eventlet`` while working to add support for running services
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with ``native threading``.
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To support both modes with the same codebase Nova started using the
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`futurist`_ library. In native threading mode ``futurist.ThreadPoolsExecutors``
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are used to run concurrent tasks and both the oslo.service and the
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oslo.messaging libraries are configured to use native threads to execute tasks
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like periodics and RPC message handlers.
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.. _futurist: https://docs.openstack.org/futurist/latest/
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To see how to configure and tune the native threading mode read the
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:doc:`/admin/concurrency` guide.
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