investigate intermittent failure of session.collections.create() about irods_client_aws_lambda_s3

[trel]

I think the get() at the end of create() is getting tripped up by being inside the AWS fabric and firing before the earlier COLL_CREATE_AN has a chance to 'settle'.

https://github.com/irods/python-irodsclient/blob/86a8f11a9399db29774c4096d83bba733a024ab6/irods/manager/collection_manager.py#L46

We can work around this scenario by catching the rare, but real, CollectionDoesNotExist exception and performing a small number of retries, perhaps with backoff.

Then, the lambda would not proceed until it got the 'go-ahead' that the Collection of interest does already exist in the iRODS catalog.

Something like...

                    try:
                        session.collections.create(irods_collection_name, recurse=True)
                    except CollectionDoesNotExist as e:
                        print('caught CollectionDoesNotExist, retrying...')
                        retries = 4
                        delay_in_seconds = 1.0
                        backoff_multiplier = 1.2
                        for i in range(retries):
                            retry_number = i+1
                            if retry_number == 1:
                                sleep_time = delay_in_seconds
                            else:
                                sleep_time = sleep_time * backoff_multiplier
                            print('retry [{}] ... sleeping for [{}]'.format(retry_number, sleep_time))
                            time.sleep(sleep_time)
                            try:
                                collection_created = session.collections.get(irods_collection_name)
                                break
                            except CollectionDoesNotExist:
                                pass
                        if not collection_created:
                            print('session.collections.create retried and still failed...')
                            raise e
                    except Exception as e:
                        print(e)

will create a PR for more easy commenting/review.

[korydraughn]

I think the get() at the end of create() is getting tripped up by being inside the AWS fabric and firing before the earlier COLL_CREATE_AN has a chance to 'settle'.

But, wouldn't that make it impossible to trust python code in AWS Lambda? The API request for the create op is supposed to be complete by the time the response is captured.

[trel]

Agreed. And yet… here we are seeing failures for the get().

[trel]

and remember, there is a network call to iRODS in there... serviced by... who knows what fabric in the middle...

in fact, two network calls - the mkdir API call, and then the query API to 'see' the newly created collection.