#13296: stat() calls can block Haskell runtime -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: nh2 | Owner: (none) Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Runtime | Version: 8.0.2 System | Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: | Type of failure: Runtime Unknown/Multiple | performance bug Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: Differential Rev(s): | Wiki Page: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- `getFileStatus` (`stat()` syscall) is marked as `unsafe`, which means that if I have e.g. `+RTS -N4`, I can't stat more than 4 files at the same time without completely stopping the Haskell world. This is an issue on network file systems, where a single `stat()` can easily take 2 milliseconds, so you typically want to do them in parallel (but due to the above you can't). The underlying problem is that there are some Linux syscalls you typically need on networked file systems that have no asynchronous equivalent; according to http://blog.libtorrent.org/2012/10/asynchronous-disk-io/ these are at least: * `stat()` * `open()` * `fallocate()` * `rename()` A quick skim through `libraries/base/System/Posix/Internals.hs` reveals the situation: * `stat()` only exists as `unsafe` * `open()` has both `safe` and `unsafe` variants (I haven't checked which one is used in practice) The remaining ones are in the `unix` package * `fallocate()` is `safe` * `rename()` is `unsafe` It seems to me that there are two issues here: 1) None of these calls should be `unsafe` because they may block for a very long time (e.g. > 0.5 ms even on the fastest LANs). 2) We need to answer the question: If we marked them as `safe`, how many of them would the RTS execute in parallel? To my current knowledge (thanks `rwbarton` and `slyfox` on #ghc), there's a pool of Haskell executing threads (the usual `-RTS -N`), and a pool of FFI threads. Are there any restrictions on the size of that latter pool? The docs https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/ffi- chap.html#foreign-imports-and-multi-threading are not specific on that topic, simply mentioning "but there may be an arbitrary number of foreign calls in progress at any one time, regardless of the +RTS -N value". Does that mean the amount of FFI threads is truly unbounded? -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/13296 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler