Use fault tolerant symlink during training to handle temporary file system inconsistencies.

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -11,6 +11,13 @@ Note that Sockeye has checks in place to not translate with an old model that wa
 
 Each version section may have subsections for: _Added_, _Changed_, _Removed_, _Deprecated_, and _Fixed_.
 
+## [3.1.35]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Use fault tolerant symlink wrapper function during training to handle cases of temporary inconsistency in distributed file systems.
+- Update DeepSpeed requirement file to specify version (`deepspeed==0.6.5`).
+
 ## [3.1.34]
 
 ### Fixed
@@ -19,7 +26,7 @@ Each version section may have subsections for: _Added_, _Changed_, _Removed_, _D
 
 ## [3.1.33]
 
-### Fixed 
+### Fixed
 - Two small fixes to SampleK. Before the device was not set correctly leading to issues when running sampling on GPUs. Furthermore, SampleK did not return the top-k values correctly.
 
 ## [3.1.32]

requirements/requirements.deepspeed.txt

@@ -1 +1 @@
-deepspeed
+deepspeed==0.6.5

sockeye/__init__.py

@@ -11,4 +11,4 @@
 # express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing
 # permissions and limitations under the License.
 
-__version__ = '3.1.34'
+__version__ = '3.1.35'

sockeye/training.py

@@ -634,7 +634,7 @@ def _update_best_params(self):
         actual_best_params_fname = C.PARAMS_NAME % self.state.best_checkpoint
         if os.path.lexists(self.best_params_fname):
             os.remove(self.best_params_fname)
-        os.symlink(actual_best_params_fname, self.best_params_fname)
+        utils.fault_tolerant_symlink(actual_best_params_fname, self.best_params_fname)
         logger.info("'%s' now points to '%s'", self.best_params_fname, actual_best_params_fname)
 
     def _save_params(self, use_checkpoint: bool = False):
@@ -709,7 +709,7 @@ def _save_training_state(self, train_iter: data_io.BaseParallelSampleIter):
             params_file = os.path.join(training_state_dirname, C.TRAINING_STATE_PARAMS_NAME)
             if os.path.exists(params_file):
                 os.unlink(params_file)
-            os.symlink(os.path.join("..", params_base_fname), params_file)
+            utils.fault_tolerant_symlink(os.path.join("..", params_base_fname), params_file)
 
             # (2) Optimizer state
             opt_state_fname = os.path.join(training_state_dirname, C.OPT_STATE_LAST)

sockeye/utils.py

@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
 import pprint
 import random
 import sys
+import time
 from collections import defaultdict
 from contextlib import contextmanager
 from itertools import starmap
@@ -817,3 +818,29 @@ def init_device(args: argparse.Namespace) -> pt.device:
         logger.info('CUDA: allow tf32 (float32 but with 10 bits precision)')
 
     return device
+
+
+def fault_tolerant_symlink(src: str, dst: str, max_retries: int = 6):
+    """
+    Attempt to create a symbolic link from source to destination. If a
+    FileExistsError is raised, assume a distributed filesystem is currently
+    synchronizing, wait, and retry. If the maximum number of retries is
+    exceeded, raise an error.
+
+    :param src: Source file.
+    :param dst: Destination file.
+    :param max_retries: Maximum number of retries.
+    """
+    retries = 0
+    while True:
+        try:
+            os.symlink(src, dst)
+            return
+        except FileExistsError as error:
+            if retries >= max_retries:
+                break
+            wait_time = 2**retries
+            logger.warn(f'Error detected when calling symlink: {error}. Retrying in {wait_time} seconds.')
+            time.sleep(wait_time)
+            retries += 1
+    raise OSError(f'Max retries exceeded when attempting to create symlink: \'{src}\' -> \'{dst}\'')

test/unit/test_utils.py

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 import os
 import re
 from tempfile import TemporaryDirectory
+import unittest
 
 import numpy as np
 import pytest
@@ -428,3 +429,20 @@ def test_rerank_hypotheses_isometric(hypothesis, hypothesis_score, source, metri
 def test_update_dict_with_prefix_kv(dest, prefix_kv, expected):
     utils.update_dict_with_prefix_kv(dest, prefix_kv)
     assert dest == expected
+
+
+@unittest.mock.patch('time.sleep')
+def test_fault_tolerant_symlink(mock_sleep):
+    with TemporaryDirectory() as temp:
+        src_fname = os.path.join(temp, 'src')
+        dst_fname = os.path.join(temp, 'dst')
+        _touch_file(src_fname, compressed=False, empty=False)
+        # First symlink succeeds
+        utils.fault_tolerant_symlink(src_fname, dst_fname)
+        # Second symlink fails after retries (file exists)
+        with pytest.raises(OSError):
+            utils.fault_tolerant_symlink(src_fname, dst_fname)
+        assert mock_sleep.called
+        # Same data read from source and destination
+        with utils.smart_open(src_fname) as src_in, utils.smart_open(dst_fname) as dst_in:
+            assert src_in.readlines() == dst_in.readlines()