e2b-dev / e2b-dev/runtime

sandbox/storage: stale team-index SET entries accumulate when sandbox keys are lost without going through Remove()

Open Beginner friendly
#3,566 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Go
Stars
1.6k
Forks
438
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Summary

The per-team sandbox index (sandbox:storage:{teamID}:index, a Redis SET) accumulates stale entries that are never cleaned up when sandbox keys disappear outside the normal Remove() path.

Root cause

ExpiredItems() sweeps orphaned ZSET members (entries in sandbox:storage:global:expiration whose corresponding sandbox key is gone), but only removes the ZSET member — it does not remove the sandboxID from the team index SET:

// items.go — current behaviour
if raw == nil {
    staleMembers = append(staleMembers, ref.member)  // ZREM the ZSET member ✓
    orphanCount++
    continue  // team index entry is NOT cleaned ✗
}

No other code path cleans the team index for absent sandbox keys:

  • TeamItems / fetchSandboxBatch silently skip nil MGET results with a continue
  • The healer (healExpirationIndex) only fills missing ZSET members, never prunes the team index
  • Remove() / removeSandboxScript cleans both atomically, but only runs on the normal removal path

The team index SET therefore grows without bound whenever sandbox keys disappear externally — most commonly via Redis maxmemory key eviction or a Redis restart with incomplete persistence.

Observed impact

Teams with high sandbox churn (frequent create / pause / resume cycles) combined with Redis key eviction can accumulate thousands of stale SET members, inflating Redis memory and slowing TeamItems (SMEMBERS + MGET fan-out is proportional to SET size, including stale entries).

Trigger conditions

  • Redis maxmemory policy that can evict individual sandbox keys (allkeys-lru, allkeys-random, etc.)
  • Redis restart with RDB/AOF disabled or incomplete
  • Any path that deletes a sandbox key without calling sandboxStore.Remove()

Frequent autoPause / autoResume amplifies the issue by increasing per-team sandbox churn and Redis memory pressure, raising the probability of key eviction.

Fix

When ExpiredItems finds an orphaned ZSET member (MGET returned nil), also SREM the sandboxID from the team index. MGET already confirmed the sandbox key is absent, so we cannot unindex a live sandbox. A concurrent Add that races the SREM will SADD the sandboxID back immediately, so the worst outcome is a brief gap in TeamItems results for one eviction cycle.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in items.go at ExpiredItems and trace how orphaned expiration-index members are removed and how team index keys are formed. Verify the existing sandbox/storage tests and add coverage for an absent sandbox key; done means the orphan cleanup removes both the global expiration member and its team-index entry without affecting live sandboxes.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go, redis
Domain
databases
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
78/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.