In some production workloads we noticed that connections could
sometimes close extremely prematurely with ETIMEDOUT after
transmitting only 1 TLP and RTO retransmission (when we would normally
expect roughly tcp_retries2 = TCP_RETR2 = 15 RTOs before a connection
closes with ETIMEDOUT).
From tracing we determined that these workloads can suffer from a
scenario where in fast recovery, after some retransmits, a DSACK undo
can happen at a point where the scoreboard is totally clear (we have
retrans_out == sacked_out == lost_out == 0). In such cases, calling
tcp_try_keep_open() means that we do not execute any code path that
clears tp->retrans_stamp to 0. That means that tp->retrans_stamp can
remain erroneously set to the start time of the undone fast recovery,
even after the fast recovery is undone. If minutes or hours elapse,
and then a TLP/RTO/RTO sequence occurs, then the start_ts value in
retransmits_timed_out() (which is from tp->retrans_stamp) will be
erroneously ancient (left over from the fast recovery undone via
DSACKs). Thus this ancient tp->retrans_stamp value can cause the
connection to die very prematurely with ETIMEDOUT via
tcp_write_err().
The fix: we change DSACK undo in fast recovery (TCP_CA_Recovery) to
call tcp_try_to_open() instead of tcp_try_keep_open(). This ensures
that if no retransmits are in flight at the time of DSACK undo in fast
recovery then we properly zero retrans_stamp. Note that calling
tcp_try_to_open() is more consistent with other loss recovery
behavior, since normal fast recovery (CA_Recovery) and RTO recovery
(CA_Loss) both normally end when tp->snd_una meets or exceeds
tp->high_seq and then in tcp_fastretrans_alert() the "default" switch
case executes tcp_try_to_open(). Also note that by inspection this
change to call tcp_try_to_open() implies at least one other nice bug
fix, where now an ECE-marked DSACK that causes an undo will properly
invoke tcp_enter_cwr() rather than ignoring the ECE mark.
Fixes: c7d9d6a185 ("tcp: undo on DSACK during recovery")
Signed-off-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
a6458ab7fd