doc: mark jobs-handling-recoverable-error as implemented

It still said "Status: not started" after the whole thing shipped and
was validated by hand against a real S3 endpoint in both directions.

Steps 1–4 marked DONE, §Testing marked DONE with the two places the
implementation departed from what the section anticipated:

* The fixture is an unreachable ADDRESS, not Azurite. Azurite's
  deterministic 500 is a *failure*, and failures were never the hard
  case — they surface and get classified. What hung was a peer that
  never answers. Also records that the existing `s3_stub`
  (`127.0.0.1:9999`) cannot serve this: nothing listens, so the
  connection is refused instantly and a test built on it would pass
  with no timeout configured anywhere.

* The bound is a polling budget, not a request duration.
  `backend_migration` is detached — the trigger returns 202 in
  milliseconds however long the backend hangs, so timing it proves
  nothing. That mistake was made and caught in review.

The header also records the two things the DESIGN did not anticipate,
because they explain why the policy alone would not have been enough:
classification cannot see a call that never returns (no error to
classify), and `NotFound` was being returned for every read failure at
nine sites — including `blob_exists`, the migration's first probe of
the source, which made a transient outage look like an absent blob and
could flip the pointer to an incomplete target.

Remaining work left explicitly open: the online-migration shape, the
stacked-retry tuning, and the one unreproduced `scanned_count`
over-report.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Edouard Vanbelle
2026-09-08 08:56:15 +02:00
parent 49979108f7
commit ef626127c6
+89 -7
View File
@@ -1,7 +1,60 @@
# Recoverable errors in jobs — retry, then pause
**Status: not started.** Design settled 2026-08-31, from a live
diagnosis (see [Motivating incident](#motivating-incident)).
**Status: implemented 2026-09-08**, except the online-migration
follow-up in [Where this should end up](#where-this-should-end-up),
which remains deliberately out of scope. Design settled 2026-08-31,
from a live diagnosis (see
[Motivating incident](#motivating-incident)).
Steps 1–4 are in, and §Testing is enforced by
`tests/api/backend_migration_blackhole.hurl`. Validated by hand against
a real S3 endpoint in both directions, with the network blackholed
mid-run: source-probe failure, target-upload failure and target-init
failure all reach `Paused` with the cause recorded and the cursor
positioned so nothing is skipped.
Two things the design did not anticipate, both found during
implementation and worth reading before touching this area:
* **Classification was not enough on its own.** A backend that *fails*
was the case this plan modelled. A backend that never *answers* has
no error to classify, so no amount of retry policy sees it. The S3
client was built from a bare `config::Builder::new()` and carried no
`TimeoutConfig` at all, which also meant `SdkError::TimeoutError` —
an arm the classifier already handled — was unreachable in
production. Fixed with `TimeoutBlobBackend` (innermost, below retry)
plus the SDK's own connect/read timeouts and stalled-stream
protection. See that module's docs for why the bound lives in the
chain rather than being configured per SDK.
* **`NotFound` was returned for every read failure.** Nine sites across
S3, Azure and local. `blob_exists` was among them, and it is the
migration's FIRST probe of the source — so a transient outage read as
"blob absent", took the permanent branch, advanced the cursor past
the row and could reach `finish_completed` with the pointer flipped
to a target missing everything the outage covered. A migration
reporting success having silently dropped whatever was unreachable.
That path is why the retry-then-pause policy alone would not have
been sufficient.
Reporting bugs surfaced by the same testing, all fixed: a paused run
logged `outcome="ok"`, a resumed run inherited the previous attempt's
`error_message` through to `Completed`, and four of five migration
counters reset per segment while `scanned_count` alone was cumulative.
Known remaining, none of them blocking:
* The online-migration shape below (the gate is still held for the
whole copy, so a paused migration freezes writes until an operator
resumes or cancels).
* Per-backend SDK retry tuning — see [Scope](#scope-azure-and-s3-both).
Two retry layers currently stack multiplicatively, so the configured
retry count is not the effective one and detection takes ~2min rather
than ~30s.
* `scanned_count` over-reported once (2522 against 2022 rows) on a run
with several pause/resume cycles. Not reproduced in five runs since;
now observable rather than inferable, because counters are persisted
per batch.
A job that hits a failing backend today has two possible endings, and
neither is right for an outage: it fails the run (throwing away a
@@ -90,7 +143,7 @@ implementation possible, and it is step 1.
---
## Step 1 — errors say whether they are retryable
## Step 1 — errors say whether they are retryable — **DONE**
Today both backends wrap SDK errors into
`DomainError::internal_error("Azure", format!("…{e}"))`, so the status
@@ -120,7 +173,7 @@ own backoff, so a second layer above it multiplies. Check what the S3
backend inherits before adding anything, and consider making the
engine's cap the *outer* bound with SDK retries reduced or disabled.
## Step 2 — an outcome the engine can act on
## Step 2 — an outcome the engine can act on — **DONE**
`RunOutcome` grows a variant meaning "the environment failed, this is
worth trying again later":
@@ -143,7 +196,7 @@ differs is `error_message`, which must let the panel — and an operator —
tell "I paused this" from "the provider went down". Without that
distinction a paused run is an unexplained one.
## Step 3 — the engine implements the policy
## Step 3 — the engine implements the policy — **DONE**
In `run_or_resume`:
@@ -159,7 +212,7 @@ Handlers then return the retryable outcome and get the policy for free.
---
## Step 4 — `migration_readonly`, the sharp edge
## Step 4 — `migration_readonly`, the sharp edge — **DONE** (conservative option; gate still held while paused, confirmed as intended)
`backend_migration` holds a gate that refuses writes **application-wide**
until cutover. What happens to it on pause is a correctness question,
@@ -238,7 +291,36 @@ SDK retry tuning stays a separate, optional refinement — and for Azure
specifically it should wait for the official SDK, since `azure_core`
0.21 is archived and queued for replacement.
## Testing
## Testing — **DONE**
Implemented as `tests/api/backend_migration_blackhole.hurl`, though not
the way this section anticipated. Two departures worth recording:
**The fixture is an unreachable address, not Azurite.** Azurite's
deterministic CRC64 500 is a *failure*, and failures were never the
hard case — they surface, get classified and retry. The case that hung
is a peer that never answers, so the entry points at `192.0.2.1`
(TEST-NET-1, RFC 5737, guaranteed unrouted): a SYN goes unanswered,
with no RST and no ICMP. Note the existing `s3_stub` entry
(`127.0.0.1:9999`) is NOT usable for this — nothing listens, so the
connection is refused instantly, and a test built on it would pass with
no timeout configured anywhere.
**The bound is a polling budget, not a request duration.**
`backend_migration` is a detached job: the trigger returns 202 in
milliseconds regardless of how long the backend hangs, so timing the
trigger proves nothing. The file polls `/runs` with `retry: 60,
retry-interval: 2000` — 120s, three orders of magnitude below the
unbounded socket's ~15min. That budget is the assertion; every other
assert in the file would eventually pass even unbounded.
It targets the **target-init** failure deliberately, because that path
pauses BEFORE `migration_readonly` is engaged and so cannot leave the
shared suite's server read-only. It also cancels its own run: a Paused
row left behind would be resumed by the next `backend_migration`
trigger in the suite.
The original notes follow.
The `backend_consistency_azure.hurl` scenario and its Azurite service
are already wired (`tests/common/docker-compose.test.yml`,