Reconsider disabling sshfs caching by default

[jandubois]

This was already proposed in PR #556.

So far we just made the setting configurable, but the default is still cache=no.

Given the problems reported in #556 and elsewhere, e.g. rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop#1349, I wonder if we shouldn't have reverted the default as well when we made the setting configurable.

[AkihiroSuda]

I don't understand why disabling cache breaks their application, but disabling cache is generally safer than enabling it, no?

Maybe Rancher Desktop should just have a GUI checkbox to toggle the caching configuration?
The default value of the Rancher Desktop GUI may differ from the default value of Lima.

[jandubois]

I don't understand why disabling cache breaks their application, but disabling cache is generally safer than enabling it, no?

It is not "their application", it seems to be breaking PHP. I can consistently reproduce the issue that composer (the PHP package manager) cannot install to the mounted host filesystem when caching is disabled, and abiosoft/colima#129 seems to hint that file access from PHP generally has problems with this option/lima 0.8.1.

I have tried to look into it, but haven't found anything yet. Intuitively I would also think that disabling caching should be safer, but at least in the case of PHP it doesn't seem to be true.

@rfay Do you have any new/additional insight into this problem?

The default value of the Rancher Desktop GUI may differ from the default value of Lima.

Of course, but I'm just talking about lima here. This is a regression in lima 0.8.1 relative to 0.8.0, and I wonder now what the benefits of disabling caching are that makes it worth it breaking compatibility with PHP.

I still would like to understand what is going on first, but I suspect both colima and Rancher Desktop will re-enable caching by default again, to fix the regression, and it would make sense to me for lima to do the same.

[rfay]

The bottom line is we need to get rid of sshfs :)

I had severe problems with caching enabled, then more severe (different kind) with it disabled. So could be something with lima 0.8.1 for sure. I was baffled by the result.

[jandubois]

I had severe problems with caching enabled, then more severe (different kind) with it disabled. So could be something with lima 0.8.1 for sure. I was baffled by the result.

@rfay So which problems were worse? 😄

I have one update: After deleting /usr/bin/unzip I can successfully run composer install in the sample project. It seems to be cloning all the packages via git though, so maybe composer install --from-source would have the same effect.

[rfay]

It was worse with caching turned off. But completely different problems. Both automated testing discoveries. So high pressure situations, unlike a normal person working away.

[jandubois]

For me both composer install and composer create-project worked fine with caching enabled, and reproducibly fail with cache=no. Given the feedback in abiosoft/colima#129 it looks like PHP worked reasonably well up to lima 0.8.0, but has been broken since then.

I wonder if @rfay's failures with caching enabled have been observed by anybody else, or if it was just in the automated CI environment.