Instead of letting every backend participating in a group commit wait
independently, have the first one that becomes ready to flush WAL wait
for the configured delay, and let all the others wait just long enough
for that first process to complete its flush. This greatly increases
the chances of being able to configure a commit_delay setting that
actually improves performance.
As a side consequence of this change, commit_delay now affects all WAL
flushes, rather than just commits. There was some discussion on
pgsql-hackers about whether to rename the GUC to, say, wal_flush_delay,
but in the absence of consensus I am leaving it alone for now.
Peter Geoghegan, with some changes, mostly to the documentation, by me.
Per testing by Andres Freund, this improves replication performance
and reduces replication latency and latency jitter. I was a bit
concerned about moving more work into XLogInsert, but testing seems
to show that it's not a problem in practice.
Along the way, improve comments for WaitLatchOrSocket.
Andres Freund. Review and stylistic cleanup by me.
If the record header is garbled, we're now quite likely to notice it before
we try to make a bogus memory allocation and run out of memory. That can
still happen, if the xlog record is split across pages (we cannot verify
the record header until reading the next page in that scenario), but this
reduces the chances. An out-of-memory is treated as a corrupt record
anyway, so this isn't a correctness issue, just a case of giving a better
error message.
Per Amit Kapila's suggestion.
This simplifies code that needs to do arithmetic on XLogRecPtrs.
To avoid changing on-disk format of data pages, the LSN on data pages is
still stored in the old format. That should keep pg_upgrade happy. However,
we have XLogRecPtrs embedded in the control file, and in the structs that
are sent over the replication protocol, so this changes breaks compatibility
of pg_basebackup and server. I didn't do anything about this in this patch,
per discussion on -hackers, the right thing to do would to be to change the
replication protocol to be architecture-independent, so that you could use
a newer version of pg_receivexlog, for example, against an older server
version.
This saves a few bytes of WAL space, but the real motivation is to make it
predictable how much WAL space a record requires, as it no longer depends
on whether we need to waste the last few bytes at end of WAL page because
the header doesn't fit.
The total length field of WAL record, xl_tot_len, is moved to the beginning
of the WAL record header, so that it is still always found on the first page
where a WAL record begins.
Bump WAL version number again as this is an incompatible change.
The continuation record only contained one field, xl_rem_len, so it makes
things simpler to just include it in the WAL page header. This wastes four
bytes on pages that don't begin with a continuation from previos page, plus
four bytes on every page, because of padding.
The motivation of this is to make it easier to calculate how much space a
WAL record needs. Before this patch, it depended on how many page boundaries
the record crosses. The motivation of that, in turn, is to separate the
allocation of space in the WAL from the copying of the record data to the
allocated space. Keeping the calculation of space required simple helps to
keep the critical section of allocating the space from WAL short. But that's
not included in this patch yet.
Bump WAL version number again, as this is an incompatible change.
The comments claimed that wasting the last segment made it easier to do
calculations with XLogRecPtrs, because you don't have problems representing
last-byte-position-plus-1 that way. In my experience, however, it only made
things more complicated, because the there was two ways to represent the
boundary at the beginning of a logical log file: logid = n+1 and xrecoff = 0,
or as xlogid = n and xrecoff = 4GB - XLOG_SEG_SIZE. Some functions were
picky about which representation was used.
Also, use a 64-bit segment number instead of the log/seg combination, to
point to a certain WAL segment. We assume that all platforms have a working
64-bit integer type nowadays.
This is an incompatible change in WAL format, so bumping WAL version number.
This reverts commit 18fb9d8d21. Per
discussion, it does not seem like a good idea to allow committed changes to
go un-checkpointed indefinitely, as could happen in a low-traffic server;
that makes us entirely reliant on the WAL stream with no redundancy that
might aid data recovery in case of disk failure.
This re-introduces the original problem of hot-standby setups generating a
small continuing stream of WAL traffic even when idle, but there are other
ways to address that without compromising crash recovery, so we'll revisit
that issue in a future release cycle.
WALSender now woken up after each background flush by WALwriter, avoiding
multi-second replication delay for an all-async commit workload.
Replication delay reduced from 7s with default settings to 200ms and often
much less, allowing significantly reduced data loss at failover.
Andres Freund and Simon Riggs
Users of asynchronous-commit mode expect there to be a guaranteed maximum
delay before an async commit's WAL records get flushed to disk. The
original version of the walwriter hibernation patch broke that. Add an
extra shared-memory flag to allow async commits to kick the walwriter out
of hibernation mode, without adding any noticeable overhead in cases where
no action is needed.
This patch modifies the walwriter process so that, when it has not found
anything useful to do for many consecutive wakeup cycles, it extends its
sleep time to reduce the server's idle power consumption. It reverts to
normal as soon as it's done any successful flushes. It's still true that
during any async commit, backends check for completed, unflushed pages of
WAL and signal the walwriter if there are any; so that in practice the
walwriter can get awakened and returned to normal operation sooner than the
sleep time might suggest.
Also, improve the checkpointer so that it uses a latch and a computed delay
time to not wake up at all except when it has something to do, replacing a
previous hardcoded 0.5 sec wakeup cycle. This also is primarily useful for
reducing the server's power consumption when idle.
In passing, get rid of the dedicated latch for signaling the walwriter in
favor of using its procLatch, since that comports better with possible
generic signal handlers using that latch. Also, fix a pre-existing bug
with failure to save/restore errno in walwriter's signal handlers.
Peter Geoghegan, somewhat simplified by Tom
This patch adjusts the core statistics views to match the decision already
taken for pg_stat_statements, that values representing elapsed time should
be represented as float8 and measured in milliseconds. By using float8,
we are no longer tied to a specific maximum precision of timing data.
(Internally, it's still microseconds, but we could now change that without
needing changes at the SQL level.)
The columns affected are
pg_stat_bgwriter.checkpoint_write_time
pg_stat_bgwriter.checkpoint_sync_time
pg_stat_database.blk_read_time
pg_stat_database.blk_write_time
pg_stat_user_functions.total_time
pg_stat_user_functions.self_time
pg_stat_xact_user_functions.total_time
pg_stat_xact_user_functions.self_time
The first four of these are new in 9.2, so there is no compatibility issue
from changing them. The others require a release note comment that they
are now double precision (and can show a fractional part) rather than
bigint as before; also their underlying statistics functions now match
the column definitions, instead of returning bigint microseconds.
Initialise ckptXidEpoch from starting checkpoint and maintain the correct
value as we roll forwards. This allows GetNextXidAndEpoch() to return the
correct epoch when executed during recovery. Backpatch to 9.0 when the
problem is first observable by a user.
Bug report from Daniel Farina
This simplifies the code a little bit. The new rule is that to update
XLogCtl->LogwrtResult, you must hold both WALWriteLock and info_lck, whereas
before we had two copies, one that was protected by WALWriteLock and another
protected by info_lck. The code that updates them was already holding both
locks, so merging the two is trivial.
The third copy, XLogCtl->Insert.LogwrtResult, was not totally redundant, it
was used in AdvanceXLInsertBuffer to update the backend-local copy, before
acquiring the info_lck to read the up-to-date value. But the value of that
seems dubious; at best it's saving one spinlock acquisition per completed
WAL page, which is not significant compared to all the other work involved.
And in practice, it's probably not saving even that much.
It's harmless to do full page writes even when not strictly necessary, so
when turning full_page_writes on, we can set the global flag first, and then
call XLogInsert. Likewise, when turning it off, we can write the WAL record
first, and then clear the flag. This way XLogInsert doesn't need any special
handling of the XLOG_FPW_CHANGE record type. XLogInsert is complicated
enough already, so anything we can keep away from there is a good thing.
Actually I don't think the atomicity of the shared memory flag matters,
anyway, because we only write the XLOG_FPW_CHANGE at the end of recovery,
when there are no concurrent WAL insertions going on. But might as well make
it safe, in case we allow changing full_page_writes on the fly in the
future.
Originally, most of this code assumed that no Postgres backends could be
running concurrently with it, and so no locking could be needed. That
assumption fails in Hot Standby. While it's still true that Hot Standby
backends should never change values like nextXid, they can examine them,
and consistency is important in some cases such as when computing a
snapshot. Therefore, prudence requires that WAL replay code obtain the
relevant locks when modifying such variables, even though it can examine
them without taking a lock. We were following that coding rule in some
places but not all. This commit applies the coding rule uniformly to all
updates of ShmemVariableCache and MultiXactState fields; a search of the
replay routines did not find any other cases that seemed to be at risk.
In addition, this commit fixes a longstanding thinko in replay of NEXTOID
and checkpoint records: we tried to advance nextOid only if it was behind
the value in the WAL record, but the comparison would draw the wrong
conclusion if OID wraparound had occurred since the previous value.
Better to just unconditionally assign the new value, since OID assignment
shouldn't be happening during replay anyway.
The additional locking seems to be more in the nature of future-proofing
than fixing any live bug, so I am not going to back-patch it. The NEXTOID
fix will be back-patched separately.
RestoreBkpBlocks was in the habit of zeroing and refilling the target
buffer; which was perfectly safe when the code was written, but is unsafe
during Hot Standby operation. The reason is that we have coding rules
that allow backends to continue accessing a tuple in a heap relation while
holding only a pin on its buffer. Such a backend could see transiently
zeroed data, if WAL replay had occasion to change other data on the page.
This has been shown to be the cause of bug #6425 from Duncan Rance (who
deserves kudos for developing a sufficiently-reproducible test case) as
well as Bridget Frey's re-report of bug #6200. It most likely explains the
original report as well, though we don't yet have confirmation of that.
To fix, change the code so that only bytes that are supposed to change will
change, even transiently. This actually saves cycles in RestoreBkpBlocks,
since it's not writing the same bytes twice.
Also fix seq_redo, which has the same disease, though it has to work a bit
harder to meet the requirement.
So far as I can tell, no other WAL replay routines have this type of bug.
In particular, the index-related replay routines, which would certainly be
broken if they had to meet the same standard, are not at risk because we
do not have coding rules that allow access to an index page when not
holding a buffer lock on it.
Back-patch to 9.0 where Hot Standby was added.
When a backend needs to flush the WAL, and someone else is already flushing
the WAL, wait until it releases the WALInsertLock and check if we still need
to do the flush or if the other backend already did the work for us, before
acquiring WALInsertLock. This helps group commit, because when the WAL flush
finishes, all the backends that were waiting for it can be woken up in one
go, and the can all concurrently observe that they're done, rather than
waking them up one by one in a cascading fashion.
This is based on a new LWLock function, LWLockWaitUntilFree(), which has
peculiar semantics. If the lock is immediately free, it grabs the lock and
returns true. If it's not free, it waits until it is released, but then
returns false without grabbing the lock. This is used in XLogFlush(), so
that when the lock is acquired, the backend flushes the WAL, but if it's
not, the backend first checks the current flush location before retrying.
Original patch and benchmarking by Peter Geoghegan and Simon Riggs, although
this patch as committed ended up being very different from that.
Base backup follows recommended procedure, plus goes to great
lengths to ensure that partial page writes are avoided.
Jun Ishizuka and Fujii Masao, with minor modifications
Previously we used ReadRecPtr rather than EndRecPtr, which was
not a serious error but caused pg_stat_replication to report
incorrect replay_location until at least one WAL record is replayed.
Fujii Masao
constructed before acquiring WALInsertLock, which slightly reduces the time
the lock is held. Although I could not measure any benefit in benchmarks,
the code is more readable this way.
Removing this bit from xl_info allows us to restore the old limit of four
(not three) separate pages touched by a WAL record, which is needed for the
upcoming SP-GiST feature, and will likely be useful elsewhere in future.
When we implemented XLR_BKP_REMOVABLE in 2007, we had to do it like that
because no special WAL-visible action was taken when starting a backup.
However, now we force a segment switch when starting a backup, so a
compressing WAL archiver (such as pglesslog) that uses the state shown in
the current page header will not be fooled as to removability of backup
blocks. The only downside is that the archiver will not return to
compressing mode for up to one WAL page after the backup is over, which is
a small price to pay for getting back the extra xl_info bit. In any case
the archiver could look for XLOG_BACKUP_END records if it thought it was
worth the trouble to do so.
Bump XLOG_PAGE_MAGIC since this is effectively a change in WAL format.
we don't reach consistency before replaying all of the WAL. Rename the
variable to reachedConsistency, to make its intention clearer.
In master, that was an active bug because of the recent patch to
immediately PANIC if a reference to a missing page is found in WAL after
reaching consistency, as Tom Lane's test case demonstrated. In 9.1 and 9.0,
the only consequence was a misleading "consistent recovery state reached at
%X/%X" message in the log at the beginning of crash recovery (the database
is not consistent at that point yet). In 8.4, the log message was not
printed in crash recovery, even though there was a similar
reachedMinRecoveryPoint local variable that was also set early. So,
backpatch to 9.1 and 9.0.
invalid-page hash table, PANIC immediately. Immediate PANIC is much better
than waiting for end-of-recovery, which is what we did before, because the
end-of-recovery might not come until months later if this is a standby
server.
Also refrain from creating a restartpoint if there are invalid-page entries
in the hash table. Restarting recovery from such a restartpoint would not
see the invalid references, and wouldn't be able to cross-check them when
consistency is reached. That wouldn't matter when things are going smoothly,
but the more sanity checks you have the better.
Fujii Masao
Previously we waited for wal_writer_delay before flushing WAL. Now
we also wake WALWriter as soon as a WAL buffer page has filled.
Significant effect observed on performance of asynchronous commits
by Robert Haas, attributed to the ability to set hint bits on tuples
earlier and so reducing contention caused by clog lookups.
Previously, we skipped a checkpoint if no WAL had been written since
last checkpoint, though this does not appear in user documentation.
As of now, we skip a checkpoint until we have written at least one
enough WAL to switch the next WAL file. This greatly reduces the
level of activity and number of WAL messages generated by a very
low activity server. This is safe because the purpose of a checkpoint
is to act as a starting place for a recovery, in case of crash.
This patch maintains minimal WAL volume for replay in case of crash,
thus maintaining very low crash recovery time.
There was a timing window between when oldestActiveXid was derived
and when it should have been derived that only shows itself under
heavy load. Move code around to ensure correct timing of derivation.
No change to StartupSUBTRANS() code, which is where this failed.
Bug report by Chris Redekop
Peter Eisentraut
Robert Haas
Heikki Linnakangas
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Simon Riggs