[jira] [Created] (CASSANDRA-5888) Need a way to start or bootstrap a node regardless of its current state

["Oleg Kibirev (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Oleg Kibirev created CASSANDRA-5888:
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             Summary: Need a way to start or bootstrap a node regardless of its current state
                 Key: CASSANDRA-5888
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-5888
             Project: Cassandra
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Core
            Reporter: Oleg Kibirev


Currently, there is no straightforward way to start a cassandra node on a given host without knowing:

1. Weather the node's initial_token has been successfully registered through gossip 

2. If the node has successfully finished bootstrapping

3. Weather data directory has been purged by, say, replacing a dead disk

Specifically the following cases are problematic:

1. If a data directory is purged and the node is restarted with the same host IP and initial token, the node will successfully start but will not bootstrap, creating a silent consistency loss.

2. If -Dcassandra.replace_token is given, the node will bootstrap again, even if its successfully bootstrapped already with the same token.

The information on the correct thing to do can only come from gossip and system keyspace. Its very difficult to infer correct start arguments from a process external to cassandra and have it work 100% of the time on large scale. What if a node already gossiped its token but has not successfully finished bootstrapping - how do I know to drop replace_token and will it still re-bootstrap?

Cassandra daemon should always bootstrap on start if it hasn't yet finished bootstrapping successfully. -Dcassandra.replace_token (or host replacement equivalent with nodes) should just ALLOW replacing a token of a down node, but not force an unnecessary bootstrap or fail if the token is not present.

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