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scylladb/replica
Raphael S. Carvalho 16e387d5f9 repair/replica: Fix race window where post-repair data is wrongly promoted to repaired
During incremental repair, each tablet replica holds three SSTable views:
UNREPAIRED, REPAIRING, and REPAIRED.  The repair lifecycle is:

  1. Replicas snapshot unrepaired SSTables and mark them REPAIRING.
  2. Row-level repair streams missing rows between replicas.
  3. mark_sstable_as_repaired() runs on all replicas, rewriting the
     SSTables with repaired_at = sstables_repaired_at + 1 (e.g. N+1).
  4. The coordinator atomically commits sstables_repaired_at=N+1 and
     the end_repair stage to Raft, then broadcasts
     repair_update_compaction_ctrl which calls clear_being_repaired().

The bug lives in the window between steps 3 and 4.  After step 3, each
replica has on-disk SSTables with repaired_at=N+1, but sstables_repaired_at
in Raft is still N.  The classifier therefore sees:

  is_repaired(N, sst{repaired_at=N+1}) == false
  sst->being_repaired == null   (lost on restart, or not yet set)

and puts them in the UNREPAIRED view.  If a new write arrives and is
flushed (repaired_at=0), STCS minor compaction can fire immediately and
merge the two SSTables.  The output gets repaired_at = max(N+1, 0) = N+1
because compaction preserves the maximum repaired_at of its inputs.

Once step 4 commits sstables_repaired_at=N+1, the compacted output is
classified REPAIRED on the affected replica even though it contains data
that was never part of the repair scan.  Other replicas, which did not
experience this compaction, classify the same rows as UNREPAIRED.  This
divergence is never healed by future repairs because the repaired set is
considered authoritative.  The result is data resurrection: deleted rows
can reappear after the next compaction that merges unrepaired data with the
wrongly-promoted repaired SSTable.

The fix has two layers:

Layer 1 (in-memory, fast path): mark_sstable_as_repaired() now also calls
mark_as_being_repaired(session) on the new SSTables it writes.  This keeps
them in the REPAIRING view from the moment they are created until
repair_update_compaction_ctrl clears the flag after step 4, covering the
race window in the normal (no-restart) case.

Layer 2 (durable, restart-safe): a new is_being_repaired() helper on
tablet_storage_group_manager detects the race window even after a node
restart, when being_repaired has been lost from memory.  It checks:

  sst.repaired_at == sstables_repaired_at + 1
  AND tablet transition kind == tablet_transition_kind::repair

Both conditions survive restarts: repaired_at is on-disk in SSTable
metadata, and the tablet transition is persisted in Raft.  Once the
coordinator commits sstables_repaired_at=N+1 (step 4), is_repaired()
returns true and the SSTable naturally moves to the REPAIRED view.

The classifier in make_repair_sstable_classifier_func() is updated to call
is_being_repaired(sst, sstables_repaired_at) in place of the previous
sst->being_repaired.uuid().is_null() check.

A new test, test_incremental_repair_race_window_promotes_unrepaired_data,
reproduces the bug by:
  - Running repair round 1 to establish sstables_repaired_at=1.
  - Injecting delay_end_repair_update to hold the race window open.
  - Running repair round 2 so all replicas complete mark_sstable_as_repaired
    (repaired_at=2) but the coordinator has not yet committed step 4.
  - Writing post-repair keys to all replicas and flushing servers[1] to
    create an SSTable with repaired_at=0 on disk.
  - Restarting servers[1] so being_repaired is lost from memory.
  - Waiting for autocompaction to merge the two SSTables on servers[1].
  - Asserting that the merged SSTable contains post-repair keys (the bug)
    and that servers[0] and servers[2] do not see those keys as repaired.

NOTE FOR MAINTAINER: Copilot initially only implemented Layer 1 (the
in-memory being_repaired guard), missing the restart scenario entirely.
I pointed out that being_repaired is lost on restart and guided Copilot
to add the durable Layer 2 check.  I also polished the implementation:
moving is_being_repaired into tablet_storage_group_manager so it can
reuse the already-held _tablet_map (avoiding an ERM lookup and try/catch),
passing sstables_repaired_at in from the classifier to avoid re-reading it,
and using compaction_group_for_sstable inside the function rather than
threading a tablet_id parameter through the classifier.

Fixes https://scylladb.atlassian.net/browse/SCYLLADB-1239.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Closes scylladb/scylladb#29244
2026-04-09 11:42:28 +03:00
..
2026-03-18 19:24:26 +01:00