[lustre-discuss] LNET ports and connections

[NeilBrown]

It is not true that:
   LNET will established connections only if asked for by upper layers.

or at least, not in the sense that the upper layers ask for a
connection.
Lustre knows nothing about connections.  Even LNet doesn't really know
about connections. It is only at the socklnd level that connections mean
much.

Lustre and LNet are message-passing protocols.
Lustre asks LNet to send a message to a given peer, and gives some
details of the sort of reply to expect.
LNet chooses a route and thus a network interface, and asked the LND to
send the message.
The socklnd LND will see if it already has a TCP connection.  If it
does, it will use it.  If not, it will create one.

So yes : it is exactly:
  possible that the server in this case opens the connection itself
  without waiting for the client to reconnect?

NeilBrown


On Tue, Feb 18 2020, Aurelien Degremont wrote:

> Thanks for your reply.
> I think I have a good enough understanding of LNET itself. My question was more about how LNET is being used by Lustre itself.
>
> LNET will established connections only if asked for by upper layers. 
> When I was talking about client and server, I was talking about how Lustre was using it.
>
> As far as I understood, Lustre server only contact clients when they need to send LDLM callbacks.
> They do so through the socket already opened by the client (reverse import).
> What happened if the socket is closed is what I'm not sure. I though the server is rather waiting for the client to reconnect and if not, is more or less evicting it.
> Could it be possible that the server in this case opens the connection itself without waiting for the client to reconnect?
>
>
> Aurélien
>
> Le 18/02/2020 05:42, « NeilBrown » <neilb at suse.com> a écrit :
>
>     
>     LNet is a peer-to-peer protocol, it has no concept of client and server.
>     If one host needs to send a message to another but doesn't already have
>     a connection, it creates a new connection.
>     I don't yet know enough specifics of the lustre protocol to be certain
>     of the circumstances when a lustre server will need to initiate a message
>     to a client, but I imagine that recalling a lock might be one.
>     
>     I think you should assume that any LNet node might receive a connection
>     from any other LNet node (for which they share an LNet network), and
>     that the connection could come from any port between 512 and 1023
>     (LNET_ACCEPTOR_MIN_PORT to LNET_ACCEPTOR_MAX_PORT).
>     
>     NeilBrown
>     
>     
>     
>     On Mon, Feb 17 2020, Degremont, Aurelien wrote:
>     
>     > Hi all,
>     >
>     > From what I've understood so far, LNET listens on port 988 by default and peers connect to it using 1021-1023 TCP ports as source ports.
>     > At Lustre level, servers listen on 988 and clients connect to them using the same source ports 1021-1023.
>     > So only accepting connections to port 988 on server side sounded pretty safe to me. However, I've seen connections from 1021-1023 to 988, from server hosts to client hosts sometimes.
>     > I can't understand what mechanism could trigger these connections. Did I miss something?
>     >
>     > Thanks
>     >
>     > Aurélien
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > lustre-discuss mailing list
>     > lustre-discuss at lists.lustre.org
>     > http://lists.lustre.org/listinfo.cgi/lustre-discuss-lustre.org
>     
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