How does Nginx look-up cached resource?

[Sergey Brester]

Hi,

On 04.09.2015 15:23, Maxim Dounin wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> On Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 06:39:49PM -0700, Shuxin Yang wrote:
> 
> ...
>> If so, how can we guarantee that crc32 and md5 combined can uniquely 
>> identify a resource?
> 
> We can't. Collisions are unavoidable if you use a hash function
> with more inputs than outputs. The question is how often
> collisions are observed in practice.

Well, but we can (I hope): the original key (not the hash of it, the key 
self, that will be set with `proxy_cache_key`, `fastcgi_cache_key` etc) 
will be saved in header of each cached file (see KEY: ...).
So it can be validated also direct after entry for hash was found 
(compare original key if hash entry was found).
In this case if collision for both hash values exists (original key does 
not match) - it should just say - not cached (and later overwrite an 
"wrong" resp. cache entry with "collision" - will very rarely do it).

In this case it is really safe (but a little bit slower, because each 
time will compare original key also).
But I hope that work exactly so (I must review the source code), because 
if not - it's very VERY evil.

Regards, sebres.