Vectored Parquet reads can fall back unsafely after partial asynchronous reads and exceed allocation limits
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- Java
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Description
### Describe the bug, including details regarding any error messages, version, and platform.
`ParquetFileReader` can produce unsafe fallback behavior when Hadoop vectored I/O
is enabled and a filesystem partially submits or completes a vectored read before
raising `IllegalArgumentException` or `UnsupportedOperationException`.
The current implementation catches those exceptions around `readVectored(...)`
and retries every range using ordinary reads against the same `ChunkListBuilder`.
If an earlier range already populated the builder, its data is appended again.
For a filtered column with selected pages `P0` and `P2`, the buffered page
sequence can become `[P0, P0, P2]` although the page index still describes
`[P0, P2]`. Depending on the page contents, decoding can fail or silently
associate the wrong page with the selected rows. Even when no page has been
consumed yet, scalar fallback is unsafe once sibling asynchronous reads may still
be operating on the same stream.
Current upstream code:
https://github.com/apache/parquet-java/blob/8e30c4cee3c7e85a8cf2133697f13138509b05b7/parquet-hadoop/src/main/java/org/apache/parquet/hadoop/ParquetFileReader.java#L1293-L1307
The same vectored path also allocates one buffer for an entire contiguous
requested range instead of honoring `parquet.read.allocation.size` (8 MiB by
default), unlike the ordinary read path. Large projected column chunks or
filtered pages can therefore create unexpectedly large heap allocations.
The current `master` branch and Apache Parquet Java 1.18.0 contain this behavior.
The vulnerable path is also present in the 1.15.x, 1.16.x, and 1.17.x release
lines. Vectored I/O defaults to enabled starting in 1.16.0, so supported Hadoop
filesystems can reach this path without an explicit opt-in; in 1.15.2 it is
reachable when explicitly enabled.
Expected behavior:
- Preserve ordinary fallback only when vectored I/O is unavailable or range
preparation fails before asynchronous submission starts.
- Once submission begins, fail the read safely rather than replaying scalar reads
against a partially populated builder or an active stream.
- Wait for already-published sibling reads before returning the original failure.
- Split filesystem byte ranges to respect the configured allocation limit without
changing the logical read plan or decoded results.
- Add regression coverage for partial submission/completion, pending sibling
futures, filtered pages, oversized columns, and checksum-enabled reads.
### Component(s)
parquet-hadoop
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
Research direction
Start in parquet-hadoop's ParquetFileReader.java at the vectored read path around lines 1293-1307, then trace ChunkListBuilder, asynchronous sibling reads, and parquet.read.allocation.size handling. Add regression coverage for partial submission or completion, pending sibling futures, filtered pages, oversized columns, and checksum-enabled reads; done means safe failure or fallback and bounded allocations without changing decoded results.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- java
- Domain
- data-engineering
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100