Projects
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Trivial Projects
Simple "get your feet wet" coding projects are tracked in JIRA using the easy keyword. These could be attempted by anyone with a knowledge of C programming, and some interest in learning Lustre or Linux kernel programming. Slightly more complex projects can be found in JIRA using the medium keyword and will typically require at least some understanding of the Lustre code.
There are also a large number of issues tracked in the Lustre Coverity Project that may be suitable for developers who want to become more familiar with the code. Note however, that some/many of the issues may not be as obvious to fix as they are presented by the Coverity tool (e.g. just initializing an uninitialized variable may not be the correct fix in some cases), but they will at least point you at code that needs to be fixed. If you are interested in working on some of these issues, please request access to the project.
Current Projects
| Feature | Feature Summary | Point of Contact | Tracker | Target Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File Level Redundancy (FLR) - Erasure Coding | Provides a more space-efficient method for adding data redundancy than mirroring. | James Simmons (ORNL), Bobijam Xu (Whamcloud) | LU-10911 | 2.17 |
| Metadata Writeback Cache | Overcome link latency for modifying metadata operations esp. noticeable in interactive type of workloads | Qian Yinjin, Oleg Drokin (Whamcloud) | LU-10938 | 2.17 |
| Enhanced_Adaptive_Compression_in_Lustre | Transparent data compression for the Lustre client and server, primarily utilizing the computational resources on the client nodes to perform compression and decompression operations when possible. This allows compressed data to be sent over the network, as well as stored on the OSTs and MDTs. | Artem Blagodarenko (Whamcloud), Anna Fuchs, Michael Kuhn (Universität Hamburg) | LU-10026 | 2.17 |
Future Projects
| Feature | Feature Summary | Point of Contact | Tracker | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File Level Redundancy (FLR) - Immediate Write Mirroring | Immediate mirrored writes from the client to multiple OSTs. | |||
| External HSM Coordinator | Add capability to run HSM coordinator in user space, which could allow 3rd-party control over HSM action queue | LU-10968 | ||
| HSM control of data migration | Allow HSM Coordinator to control data migration (`lfs migrate`), which could allow copy tools to move data in parallel | LU-6081 | ||
| Lustre Metadata Redundancy | Redundancy of Lustre services running on MDT0000 and directories | LU-12310 |
Potential Projects
These projects are potential areas of development that are looking for an interested party to work on or sponsor another developer to do. Many of them have more detailed descriptions, but it is worthwhile to contact the lustre-devel mailing list to discuss the project before starting implementation.
| Feature | Feature Summary | Complexity | Tracker |
|---|---|---|---|
| ioctl() number cleanups | Clean up Linux IOC numbering to properly use "size" field so that mixed 32- and 64-bit kernel/userspace ioctls work correctly. Attention needs to be paid to maintaining userspace compatibility for a number of releases, so the old ioctl() numbers cannot simply be removed. | 1 | LU-6202 |
| Updated man pages | Update the online manual pages for Lustre user tools and the lustreapi library. Split the existing lfs.1 and lctl.8 man pages into separate pages for each sub-command, describing options and providing usage examples. | 2 | LU-4315 |
| Improve testing Efficiency | Improve the performance, efficiency, and coverage of the acceptance-small.sh test scripts. | 3 | |
| STATX_PROJID | Add support for a new STATX_PROJID flag to the upstream kernel statx() interface for ext4 and XFS. Include this in Lustre and have "lfs find" use this interface. | 4 | LU-12480 |
| Error message improvements | Review and improve the Lustre error messages to be more useful and follow the Lustre coding style (see Lustre_Coding_Style_Guidelines#Console_Error_Messages. A larger project is to change the core Lustre error message handling to generate better structured error messages so that they can be parsed/managed more easily. | 4 | |
| Improve QOS Round-Robin object allocator | Improve LOV QOS allocator to always do weighted round-robin allocation, instead of degrading into weighted random allocations once the OST free space becomes imbalanced. This evens out allocations continuously, avoids crazy/bad OST allocation imbalances when QOS becomes active, and allows adding weighting for things like current load, OST RAID rebuild, etc. | 6 | LU-9 |
| RTDS(Real-Time Dynamic Striping) | A policy based Lustre striping framework | 6 | LU-9809 |
| NFSv4 ACL Support | Add handling of NFSv4 ACLs to Lustre | 6 | LU-13862 |
| RPC Replay Signatures | Allow MDS/OSS to determine if client can legitimately replay an RPC, by digitally signing it at processing time and verifying the signature at replay time. | 6 | LU-15250 |
| Simplified Interoperability | Add functionality so servers can force clients quiesce all opertaions, drop all locks, and flush unreplied RPCs. This allows administrators to halt operations on clients without having to unmount the filesystem. This prevents unintended operations on the server (e.g. during maintenance), reduces recovery operations if a server is being cleanly shut down, and avoids RPC replay issues across major Lustre server version upgrades. Open file recovery should be done by generating new open RPCs on the client, rather than replaying RPCs stored in the replay list, which also allows removing the special-case handling of open RPCs that are already committed. This is partially implemented by the LU-8900 snapshot RPC write barrier, but this only freezes the filesystem for new writes, and does not address the issue of replaying open file handles. | 6 | LU-5703 |
| Virtual Lustre Block Device | Lustre object lloop driver previously exported a virtual block device to userspace for a file, bypassing the filesystem. Code partly worked but was removed from Lustre due to correctness issues and potential performance problems. It needs to be rewritten to work with newer kernels, by providing a new "backend" for the kernel loop driver and avoid data copies to avoid deadlocks under memory pressure. | 6 | LU-6585 |
| Swap on Lustre | Implement kernel swapping to Lustre for diskless clients. This needs to work properly under memory pressure, or it will be useless when swap is actually needed. | 7 | |
| ZFS ZIL Support | Add support for the ZFS Intent Log (ZIL) to the Lustre osd-zfs | 8 | LU-4009 |
| Local object zero-copy IO | Efficient data IO between a client and a local OST object; optimization to support local clients. Likely implemented as a fast-path connection between the OSC and the local OFD/OSD. Read cache should be kept on the OSD instead of at the client VFS level, so that the cache can be shared among all users of this OST. | 9 | LU-10191 |
Past Projects
| Feature | Feature Summary | Point of Contact | Tracker | GA Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Imperative Recovery | Servers notify clients (via MGS) where a failed target has restarted to reduce waiting time during recovery. | Jinshan Xiong (Intel) | LU-19 | 2.2 |
| LFSCK Phase 1 - OI Scrub Solution Architecture | Check and repair Object Index on ldiskfs filesystems via OI Scrub to allow file-level backup/restore of MDT filesystems. | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-957 | 2.3 |
| LFSCK Phase 1.5 - FID-in-Dirent and LinkEA Consistency | Enhance LFSCK to work with DNE filesystems, checking the Lustre FID stored in MDT directory entries and the parent LinkEA entries for hard links. | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-1866 | 2.4 |
| Shared Secret Key Encryption | Allow shared-secret key encryption and authentication for Lustre network traffic without the use of an external keyserver | Andrew Korty, Jeremy Filizetti (Indiana University) | LU-3289 | 2.6 |
| LFSCK Phase 2 - MDT-OST consistency | Enhance LFSCK to check layout consistency between MDT file layouts and OST objects. | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-1267 | 2.6 |
| LFSCK Phase 3 - DNE consistency | Enhance LFSCK to work with DNE filesystems, including remote directory entries, and OST orphan handling for multiple MDTs. | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-2307 | 2.6 |
| UID/GID Nodemap | Allow mapping UID/GID and server-side configuration on a per-client/per-cluster basis | Joshua Walgenbach, Kit Westneat (Indiana University) | LU-4647 | 2.7 |
| Dynamic LNET Configuration | Introduces a user space script which will read routes from a config file and add those routes to LNET dynamically with the lctl utility. This allows the support of very large routing tables | Amir Shehata (Intel) | LU-2456 | 2.7 |
| LFSCK Phase 4 - Performance Tuning | Enhance LFSCK performance and efficiency. | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-6361 | 2.8 |
| Multiple metadata RPCs | Support of multiple metadata modifications per client (in last_rcvd file) to improve the multi-threaded metadata performance of a single client | Grégoire Pichon (Bull/Atos) | LU-5319 | 2.8 |
| DNE Phase IIb | Asynchronous Commit of cross-MDT updates for improved performance. Remote rename and remote hard link functionality. | Wang Di (Intel) | LU-3534 | 2.8 |
| Kerberos Revival | Fix up existing Kerberos code so it is tested working again. | Sébastien Buisson (Bull/Atos) | LU-6356 | 2.8 |
| Filesystem default OST pool | Allow a default filesystem-wide default OST pool to be specified. | Lai Siyao (Intel) | LU-7660, LU-7335 | 2.9 |
| UID/GID mapping | Map UID/GID for remote client nodes to local UID/GID on the MDS and OSS. Allows a single Lustre filesystem to be shared across clients with administrative domains. | Stephen Simms (Indiana University) | LU-3291 | 2.9 |
| Subdirectory Mounts | Ability for client to mount subdirectories of a Lustre filesystem | Wang Shilong (DDN) | LU-28 | 2.9 |
| Server side advise and hinting | Add support new APIs and utilities for server/storage side advise of accessing file for server cache | Li Xi (DDN) | LU-4931 | 2.9 |
| Large Bulk IO | Increase the OST bulk IO maximum size to 16MB or larger for more efficient disk IO submission. | Shuichi Ihara (DDN) | LU-7990 | 2.9 |
| Shared Key Crypto | Allow node authentication and/or RPC encryption using symmetric shared key crypto with GSSAPI. Avoids complexity in configuring Kerberos across multiple domains. | Stephen Simms (Indiana University) | LU-3289 | 2.9 |
| Multi-Rail LNet | Use multiple LNet network interfaces concurrently to improve reliability and performance | Amir Shehata (Intel), Olaf Weber (SGI) | LU-7734 | 2.10 |
| TBF policy enhancement | An enhancement of NRS/TBF policy to support complex TBF policy with NID/JOBID expressions | Li Xi (DDN) | LU-5620 LU-7470 LU-8236 | 2.10 |
| Simplified Userspace Snapshots | Allow snapshots of ZFS targets to be mounted as a coherent filesystem | Fan Yong (Intel) | LU-8900 | 2.10 |
| Layout Enhancement | Add support for composite layouts on a single file, for File Level Replication, Data on MDT, PFL, etc. | Jinshan Xiong, Niu Yawei (Intel) | LU-3480 | 2.10 |
| Progressive File Layouts | Allow composite file layouts to be instantiated incrementally during file writes | Jinshan Xiong, Niu Yawei (Intel) | LU-8998 | 2.10 |
| Project Quota | Allow specifying a "project" or "subtree" identifier for files for accounting to a project, separate from UID/GID. | Shuichi Ihara (DDN) | LU-4017 | 2.10 |
| NRS Delay policy | Use NRS for fault injection. Intentionally delay request processing to simulate server load. | Chris Horn (Cray) | LU-6283 | 2.10 |
| Patchless Server | Remove Lustre kernel patches to allow Lustre servers to be more easily ported to new kernels, and to be built against vendor kernels without changing the vendor kernel RPMs. | Oleg Drokin (Intel) | LU-20 | 2.10 |
| Asynchronous Lock ahead | Allow user space to request LDLM extent locks in advance of need. Intended to optimize shared file IO. | Patrick Farrell (Cray) | LU-6179 | 2.11 |
| Data on MDT | Allow small files to be stored directly on the MDT for reduced RPC count and improved performance. | Mikhail Pershin (Intel) | LU-3285 | 2.11 |
| File Level Redundancy (FLR) - Phase 1 Delayed Mirroring | Files can be mirrored on multiple OSTs in the same namespace, with delayed resync of files using userspace tools. | Jinshan Xiong (Intel) | LU-3254 | 2.11 |
| Lustre Audit with Changelogs | Introduce Lustre Audit feature to be able to track all accesses to files residing on Lustre | Sebastien Buisson (DDN) | LU-9727 | 2.11 |
| Lazy size on MDT | Lazy size on MDT (LSOM) provides ability of "Lazy" file size from MDS rather than size from OSS today. | Li Xi (DDN) | LU-9538 | 2.12 |
| Config save/edit/restore | Ability to backup/edit/restore the client/MDS/OSS config llog files after a writeconf for config recovery if the config llog becomes corrupted, and to avoid losing filesystem tunable parameters (including all of the OST pool definitions) stored in the config llog if a writeconf is done. | Ben Evans (Cray) | LU-4939 | 2.12 |
| Persistent Client Cache | A framework to cache files in storage local to the Lustre client. | Li Xi, Yingjin Qian (Whamcloud) | LU-10092 | 2.13 |
| Self Extending Layouts | Avoid ENOSPC by leveraging extension spaces in layout | Vitaly Fertman (Cray) | LU-10070 | 2.13 |
| Foreign Layouts | Allow linking files/directories to arbitrary identifiers (e.g. DAOS datasets) | Bruno Faccini (Intel) | LU-11376 | 2.13 |
| Data on MDT Phase 2 | DNE+DoM optimization, migration, read-on-open, stat() and readdir() returning file data, glimpse-ahead, file create improvements. | Mike Pershin (Whamcloud) | LU-10176 | 2.13 |
| File heat | Add support new attribute "file heat" of objects to track "hot" files, for client and OFD | Li Xi (Whamcloud) | LU-10602 | 2.13 |
| OST Pool Quotas | Limit OST pool usage via quotas | Sergey Chermencev (Cray) | LU-11023 | 2.14 |
| Client-side data encryption | Encrypt files and directories (or possibly just filenames in directories) on the client before sending to the server. This avoids sending unencrypted data over the network, or ever having the data in plaintext on the server (in case of separate decryption from network plus encryption on disk). | Sebastien Buisson (Whamcloud) | LU-12275 | 2.14 |
| OSP multiple modify requests to MDT | Improve performance of cross-MDT modify operations. | Grégoire Pichon (Atos) | LU-6864 | 2.15 |
| Directory bulk operations | Bulk metadata readdir/stat interface to speed up "ls -l" operations. Send back requested inode attributes for all directory entries as part of the extended dirent data. Integrate with any proposed API for this on the client. Needs Large Readdir RPCs to be efficient over the wire, since more data will be returned for every entry. | Qian Yinjin (Whamcloud) | LU-14139 | 2.16 |