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*ttl drivers: TTL branch dereferences delete() result without a nil check, killing the fiber

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
76/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
lua
Domain
backend

Research direction

Start with the TTL branches in queue/abstract/driver/fifottl.lua and utubettl.lua at the referenced lines, then read the delete implementation around fifottl.lua#L334-L342 and compare the handling in subqueuettl from #259. Verify the chosen fix for a task deleted between selection and deletion, including vinyl and MVCC cases, and ensure TTL processing continues instead of the fiber dying.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Environment: queue master (07fd732), also 1.5.0. Found by code review while porting the subqueuettl driver (#259), which copies the same loop.

Summary

In the TTL branch of the fiber iteration the result of delete() is dereferenced unconditionally:

-- fifottl.lua#L113-L117, same in utubettl.lua#L243 and #L521
task = self.space.index.watch:min{ task_state }
if task ~= nil and task[i_status] == task_state then
    if now >= task[i_next_event] then
        task = self:delete(task[i_id]):transform(2, 1, state.DONE)
        self:on_task_change(task, 'ttl')

but method.delete() returns nil when the task is already gone (fifottl.lua#L334-L342), so a task that disappears between min() and delete() produces attempt to index a nil value, the fiber dies, and TTL processing stops for good (see #263). The delayed and TTR branches tolerate a nil from update() because abstract.lua ignores on_task_change(nil, ...); only the TTL branch does not.

When it is reachable

  • memtx without MVCC: not reachable, there is no yield between min() and get(); I could not reproduce it there.
  • vinyl (fifottl supports engine = 'vinyl'): reads may yield on disk I/O, so a concurrent ack()/delete() of the same expired task between min() and delete() hits it.
  • memtx with MVCC: delete() may also raise Transaction has been aborted by conflict with a concurrent write on the same task, which kills the fiber the same way.

Suggested fix

Either guard the result:

task = self:delete(task[i_id])
if task ~= nil then
    self:on_task_change(task, 'ttl')
end

or do min() + delete() inside one box.atomic() so the selection and the delete see the same state. The subqueuettl driver in #259 does the former for the fork we run.

Dominant language
Lua
Stars
244
Forks
56
Avg merge
6d 8h
Merged PRs (30d)
1

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