Re: [HACKERS] It sorta works, but I'm confused about locking

> I've got this new notify code almost working, but...
>
> What exactly is the protocol for locking a table that you intend to
> modify?  The old notify code just did RelationSetLockForWrite(),
> but it's not clear to me that that works correctly --- for one thing,
> it doesn't seem to offer any way of detecting failure to acquire the
> lock.  (RelationSetLockForWrite calls MultiLockReln, which *does*
> return a boolean, but RelationSetLockForWrite ignores it...)  Also,
> it's not at all clear whether I should call RelationUnsetLockForWrite
> at the end of the routine or not; some existing code does, some doesn't.

Welcome to PostgreSQL.  This is the type of thing I saw when doing the
mega-patch, were people were not doing things consistently, because some
coders do not understand what is happening inside the code, and just
write something that works, sort of.

I recommend you check out what is currently done properly, and fix the
ones that are incorrect.

I can imagine some cases where you would want to get a lock and keep it
until the end of the transaction, and other times when you would want to
release it before transaction end.


>
> I'm concerned because interlocking of the specialized NOTIFY-related
> statements seems to work fine, but they seem not to be interlocked
> against user operations on the pg_listener table.
>
> For example, this works as I'd expect:
>
>     psql#1                psql#2
>
>     begin;
>     listen z;
>
>                     notify z;
>                     (hangs up until #1 commits)
>
>     end;
>
> because "listen" acquires a write lock on the pg_listener table, which
> the notify has to wait for.
>
> But this doesn't work as I'd expect:
>
>     psql#1                psql#2
>
>     begin;
>     select * from pg_listener;
>
>                     notify z;
>                     (completes immediately)
>
>     end;
>
> Seems to me the "select" should acquire a read lock that would prevent
> the #2 backend from writing pg_listener until the end of #1's transaction.
>
> Is there a bug here, or is there some special definition of user access
> to a system table that means the select isn't acquiring a read lock?
> Selects and updates on ordinary user tables seem to interlock fine...

Select certainly should be locking.  Something is wrong, but I am not
sure what.  If you want me to check into it, let me know.


--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
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