Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix freezing of a dead HOT-updatedtuple

Hello,

Andres Freund wrote:

> On 2017-12-06 17:23:55 -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > > I've played around quite some with the attached patch. So far, after
> > > applying the second patch, neither VACUUM nor VACUUM FULL / CLUSTER make
> > > the situation worse for already existing corruption. HOT pruning can
> > > change the exact appearance of existing corruption a bit, but I don't
> > > think it can make the corruption meaningfully worse.  It's a bit
> > > annoying and scary to add so many checks to backbranches but it kinda
> > > seems required.  The error message texts aren't perfect, but these are
> > > "should never be hit" type elog()s so I'm not too worried about that.
> > 
> > Looking at 0002: I agree with the stuff being done here.  I think a
> > couple of these checks could be moved one block outerwards in term of
> > scope; I don't see any reason why the check should not apply in that
> > case.  I didn't catch any place missing additional checks.
> 
> I think I largely put them into the inner blocks because they were
> guaranteed to be reached in those case (the horizon has to be before the
> cutoff etc), and that way additional branches are avoided.

Hmm, it should be possible to call vacuum with a very low freeze_min_age
(which sets a very recent relfrozenxid), then shortly thereafter call it
with a large one, no?  So it's not really guaranteed ...


> > Despite these being "shouldn't happen" conditions, I think we should
> > turn these up all the way to ereports with an errcode and all, and also
> > report the XIDs being complained about.  No translation required,
> > though.  Other than those changes and minor copy editing a commit
> > (attached), 0002 looks good to me.
> 
> Hm, I don't really care one way or another. I do see that you used
> errmsg() in some places, errmsg_internal() in others. Was that
> intentional?

Eh, no, my intention was to make these all errmsg_internal() to avoid
translation (serves no purpose here).  Feel free to update the remaining
ones.


> > I started thinking it'd be good to report block number whenever anything
> > happened while scanning the relation.  The best way to go about this
> > seems to be to add an errcontext callback to lazy_scan_heap, so I attach
> > a WIP untested patch to add that.  (I'm not proposing this for
> > back-patch for now, mostly because I don't have the time/energy to push
> > for it right now.)
> 
> That seems like a good idea. There's some cases where that could
> increase log spam noticeably (unitialized blocks), but that seems
> acceptable.

Yeah, I noticed that and I agree it seems ok.

> > +    if (info->blkno != InvalidBlockNumber)
> > +        errcontext("while scanning page %u of relation %s",
> > +                   info->blkno, RelationGetRelationName(info->relation));
> > +    else
> > +        errcontext("while vacuuming relation %s",
> > +                   RelationGetRelationName(info->relation));
> 
> Hm, perhaps rephrase so both messages refer to vacuuming? E.g. just by
> replacing scanning with vacuuming?

Makes sense.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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