04e5082d52
DynamoDB limits of all expressions (ConditionExpression, UpdateExpression,
ProjectionExpression, FilterExpression, KeyConditionExpression) to just
4096 bytes. Until now, Alternator did not enforce this limit, and we had
an xfailing test showing this.
But it turns out that not enforcing this limit can be dangerous: The user
can pass arbitrarily-long and arbitrarily nested expressions, such as:
a<b and (a<b and (a<b and (a<b and (a<b and (a<b and (...))))))
or
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
and those can cause recursive algorithms in Alternator's parser and
later when applying expressions to recurse very deeply, overflow the
stack, and crash.
This patch includes new tests that demonstrate how Scylla crashes during
parsing before enforcing the 4096-byte length limit on expressions.
The patch then enforces this length limit, and these tests stop crashing.
We also verify that deeply-nested expressions shorter than the 4096-byte
limit are apparently short enough for our recursion ability, and work
as expected.
Unforuntately, running these tests many times showed that the 4096-byte
limit is not low enough to avoid all crashes so this patch needs to do
more:
The parsers created by ANTLR are recursive, and there is no way to limit
the depth of their recursion (i.e., nothing like YACC's YYMAXDEPTH).
Very deep recursion can overflow the stack and crash Scylla. After we
limited the length of expression strings to 4096 bytes this was *almost*
enough to prevent stack overflows. But unfortunetely the tests revealed
that even limited to 4096 bytes, the expression can sometimes recurse
too deeply: Consider the expression "((((((....((((" with 4000 parentheses.
To realize this is a syntax error, the parser needs to do a recursive
call 4000 times. Or worse - because of other Antlr limitations (see rants
in comments in expressions.g) it's actually 12000 recursive calls, and
each of these calls have a pretty large frame. In some cases, this
overflows the stack.
The solution used in this patch is not pretty, but works. We add to rules
in alternator/expressions.g that recurse (there are two of those - "value"
and "boolean_expression") an integer "depth" parameter, which we increase
when the rule recurses. Moreover, we add a so-called predicate
"{depth<MAX_DEPTH}?" that stops the parsing when this limit is reached.
When the parsing is stopped, the user will see a special kind of parse
error, saying "expression nested too deeply".
With this last modification to expressions.g, the tests for deeply-nested but
still-below-4096-bytes expressions
(test_limits.py::test_deeply_nested_expression_*) would not fail sporadically
as they did without it.
While adding the "expression nested too deeply" case, I also made the
general syntax-error reporting in Alternator nicer: It no longer prints
the internal "expression_syntax_error" type name (an exception type will
only be printed if some sort of unexpected exception happens), and it
prints the character position where the syntax error (or too deep
nested expression) was recognized.
Fixes #14473
Signed-off-by: Nadav Har'El <nyh@scylladb.com>
Closes #14477
Scylla
What is Scylla?
Scylla is the real-time big data database that is API-compatible with Apache Cassandra and Amazon DynamoDB. Scylla embraces a shared-nothing approach that increases throughput and storage capacity to realize order-of-magnitude performance improvements and reduce hardware costs.
For more information, please see the ScyllaDB web site.
Build Prerequisites
Scylla is fairly fussy about its build environment, requiring very recent versions of the C++20 compiler and of many libraries to build. The document HACKING.md includes detailed information on building and developing Scylla, but to get Scylla building quickly on (almost) any build machine, Scylla offers a frozen toolchain, This is a pre-configured Docker image which includes recent versions of all the required compilers, libraries and build tools. Using the frozen toolchain allows you to avoid changing anything in your build machine to meet Scylla's requirements - you just need to meet the frozen toolchain's prerequisites (mostly, Docker or Podman being available).
Building Scylla
Building Scylla with the frozen toolchain dbuild is as easy as:
$ git submodule update --init --force --recursive
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./configure.py
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ninja build/release/scylla
For further information, please see:
- Developer documentation for more information on building Scylla.
- Build documentation on how to build Scylla binaries, tests, and packages.
- Docker image build documentation for information on how to build Docker images.
Running Scylla
To start Scylla server, run:
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./build/release/scylla --workdir tmp --smp 1 --developer-mode 1
This will start a Scylla node with one CPU core allocated to it and data files stored in the tmp directory.
The --developer-mode is needed to disable the various checks Scylla performs at startup to ensure the machine is configured for maximum performance (not relevant on development workstations).
Please note that you need to run Scylla with dbuild if you built it with the frozen toolchain.
For more run options, run:
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./build/release/scylla --help
Testing
See test.py manual.
Scylla APIs and compatibility
By default, Scylla is compatible with Apache Cassandra and its APIs - CQL and Thrift. There is also support for the API of Amazon DynamoDB™, which needs to be enabled and configured in order to be used. For more information on how to enable the DynamoDB™ API in Scylla, and the current compatibility of this feature as well as Scylla-specific extensions, see Alternator and Getting started with Alternator.
Documentation
Documentation can be found here. Seastar documentation can be found here. User documentation can be found here.
Training
Training material and online courses can be found at Scylla University. The courses are free, self-paced and include hands-on examples. They cover a variety of topics including Scylla data modeling, administration, architecture, basic NoSQL concepts, using drivers for application development, Scylla setup, failover, compactions, multi-datacenters and how Scylla integrates with third-party applications.
Contributing to Scylla
If you want to report a bug or submit a pull request or a patch, please read the contribution guidelines.
If you are a developer working on Scylla, please read the developer guidelines.
Contact
- The community forum and Slack channel are for users to discuss configuration, management, and operations of the ScyllaDB open source.
- The developers mailing list is for developers and people interested in following the development of ScyllaDB to discuss technical topics.