HTTP_X_NEWEST requests require objects to have a timestamp header

[Doug Weimer]

In proxy/server.py GETorHEAD_base, the code block to find the newest object will never select a source if the objects don't have x-put-timestamp or x-timestamp headers. I ran into this issue when testing the upgrade from Cactus (using swauth) to 1.4.2 (using swauth 1.0.3-dev). The swauth user objects don't have timestamps set and the authentication process fails when GETorHEAD_base returns a 404.

The issue is that the 'pts > ts' condition never sets source if all of the object timestamps are 0. Always setting source to possible_source when source is undefined would fix this issue, but it would change the behavior of HTTP_X_NEWEST requests. I'm not sure how strict HTTP_X_NEWEST was intended to be.

(line 647 in current trunk)
if newest:
    ts = 0
    if source:
        ts = float(source.getheader('x-put-timestamp') or
                      source.getheader('x-timestamp') or 0)

    pts = float(possible_source.getheader('x-put-timestamp') or
                   possible_source.getheader('x-timestamp') or 0)

    if pts > ts:
        source = possible_source
    continue

[Doug Weimer (dweimer)]

The linked branch will set 'source = possible_source' if source does not exist. Regardless of whether or not a timestamp is present.

[John Dickinson (notmyname)]

if you are done coding on your linked branch, please propose it for merging

[gholt (gholt)]

Ah interesting. I suppose we never noticed this as we upgrade our object servers before we upgrade our proxy servers. Thanks for the report and patch!