Fix pack_write's O(n^2) dedup + correctness bug; document mount table O(n^2)

A audit for other instances of the file-index O(n^2) shape (fixed
previously via the persistent treap) found two more real issues:

1. pack_write's Section 9.2 exact-duplicate elimination was a linear scan
   of every previously-seen (hash, size) pair per entry -- O(n^2) total,
   invisible in the existing benchmark because its identical-content test
   files made every scan match on the first comparison. Measured with
   unique content instead: 80,000 entries took 1.74s, with a 20,000->80,000
   step showing 15.6x for a 4x-N step, matching O(n^2)'s 16x prediction.
   The same scan also trusted a (hash, size) match without ever comparing
   actual bytes -- a latent correctness bug, since FNV-1a64 is explicitly
   not collision-resistant. Fixed both at once with an open-addressing hash
   table (load factor 1/2, linear probing) plus a memcmp verification
   before ever reusing a data_off. Post-fix: 80,000 entries in 0.044s
   (39.6x faster), ratio drops to 3.35x (consistent with O(n)).

   Covered permanently by two new/extended tests: a white-box assertion in
   test_pack_overlay.c that duplicate-content entries share one data_off
   and distinct-content entries do not, and a new
   tests/test_pack_write_perf.c regression tripwire against 10,000 unique
   entries.

2. vfs.c's mount table uses the same full-array-copy-per-write pattern the
   file index used to, confirmed O(n^2) via a new bench/bench.c category
   (500/2,000/8,000 mounts, both 4x-N steps showing 15-20x). Deliberately
   NOT rewritten: mount points are created by a program's own source code,
   not workload-driven, so realistic mount counts never reach the scale
   that made the file index's O(n^2) a real problem. Documented with full
   reasoning in BENCH.md and CLAUDE.md rather than silently left as an
   undocumented gap.

Also fixes a real CI gap the new tests exposed: ci.yml's sanitizer-build
steps never passed -D_GNU_SOURCE when compiling test files (only the
library .o's got it), which was harmless while no test included
internal.h and became a link failure once two did (internal.h needs
_GNU_SOURCE for pthread_rwlock_t). And documents, in CONTRIBUTING.md and
CLAUDE.md, a sandbox flake observed directly during this work's own
sanitizer runs: ASan/UBSan test binaries occasionally fail to start with
AddressSanitizer:DEADLYSIGNAL (sometimes looping rather than exiting),
non-deterministically hitting different unrelated binaries across runs --
a startup race, not a memory-safety bug, confirmed by clean passes on
retry; sanitizer runs in such an environment should be timeout-wrapped.

BENCH.md's "After" table and Appendix B are replaced with the current,
complete 54-measurement bench/bench.c run (the original 45 plus the new
mount-scaling category); the pre-fix 45-measurement "Before" table is kept
as the historical record, per this project's documentation standard.

Verified: make test (all 6 binaries, including the 2 new/changed), a clean
make all, and repeated ASan+UBSan runs (0 real findings; the DEADLYSIGNAL
flake above was observed and correctly distinguished from a real finding
by re-running until a clean pass). TSan could not be run in this sandbox
(pre-existing, documented environment limitation).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01UqJpkdJ6Njnt1pw3CbghzB
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-14 09:55:47 +00:00
co-authored by Claude Sonnet 5
parent edbf97b3f1
commit 684c6d95de
9 changed files with 693 additions and 205 deletions
+15 -12
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@@ -68,18 +68,21 @@ process's lifetime.
`bench/bench.c` (`make bench`) measures PackFS against the host filesystem
across metadata operations (create/read/stat/readdir/unlink/mkdir), large
sequential I/O, random-access pack reads, and concurrent mixed workloads.
[`BENCH.md`](BENCH.md) has the full results and honest analysis of both the
wins and the losses, including the story of a real bug this benchmark
found: an early run turned up a quantitatively-confirmed O(n²) cost in bulk
sequential file creation, which `concept.md` Section 5.3 had explicitly
anticipated and named the trigger condition for closing. That's since been
fixed (`src/upper.c`'s index is a persistent treap now, not a flat array),
re-benchmarked, and re-confirmed as an actual complexity-class change, not
just a faster constant factor — see `BENCH.md`'s "Resolution" section for
the before/after numbers. Read the whole file before quoting a number from
it: what `raw fs` vs `raw+fsync` vs `dir` each actually measure is not
interchangeable, and it explains why.
sequential I/O, random-access pack reads, mount-table scaling, and
concurrent mixed workloads. [`BENCH.md`](BENCH.md) has the full results and
honest analysis of both the wins and the losses, including the story of
three real O(n²) findings this project's own benchmarking turned up — not
just the wins. Two are fixed: bulk sequential file creation (`src/upper.c`'s
index is a persistent treap now, not a flat array — see "Resolution") and
`pack_write`'s compaction-time duplicate-content elimination, which also had
a latent correctness bug now closed alongside it (see "Resolution #2"). One
is confirmed and *deliberately not* fixed: the mount table scales O(n²) in
mount count, the same way the file index used to, but mount counts are
bounded by a program's own source code rather than workload-driven, so it
isn't worth the added complexity — see "Finding: mount table scaling" for
the reasoning and the numbers behind that call. Read the whole file before
quoting a number from it: what `raw fs` vs `raw+fsync` vs `dir` each
actually measure is not interchangeable, and it explains why.
`openat2`/Landlock support (Section 6) is detected automatically at compile
time via `<sys/syscall.h>`; on kernels or platforms without them, `dir`