ProcessStandbyHSFeedbackMessage has a race condition: it thinks it can
call GetOldestXmin and then the result will politely hold still while
it considers what to do next. But in fact, whoever has the oldest xmin
could exit their transaction, allowing the global minimum to advance.
If a VACUUM process then inspects the ProcArray, it could compute an
oldest xmin that is newer than the value that
ProcessStandbyHSFeedbackMessage installs just afterwards. So much
for keeping the data the standby wanted.
AFAICS we have to do all the logic about choosing the new value for
MyProc->xmin while holding ProcArrayLock, which IMO means that it should
go into a function in procarray.c. The fact that walsender.c is taking
ProcArrayLock and whacking MyProc->xmin around is already a horrid
violation of modularity, even if it weren't incorrect.
Also, it seems like using GetOldestXmin is quite wrong here anyway; we
don't really want a result modified by vacuum_defer_cleanup_age do we?
It looks to me like that would result in vacuum_defer_cleanup_age being
applied twice: the walsender process sets its xmin the defer age into
the past, and then subsequent calls of GetOldestXmin compute a result
that is the defer age further back. IOW this is an independent
mechanism that also results in the computed global xmin going backwards.
(Now that we have a standby feedback mechanism, I'm a bit tempted to
propose getting rid of vacuum_defer_cleanup_age altogether, rather than
hacking things to avoid the above.)
regards, tom lane