When heap_lock_tuple decides to follow the update chain, it tried to
also lock any version of the tuple that was created by an update that
was subsequently rolled back. This is pointless, since for all intents
and purposes that tuple exists no more; and moreover it causes
misbehavior, as reported independently by Marko Tiikkaja and Marti
Raudsepp: some SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE queries may fail to return
the tuples, and assertion-enabled builds crash.
Fix by having heap_lock_updated_tuple test the xmin and return success
immediately if the tuple was created by an aborted transaction.
The condition where tuples become invisible occurs when an updated tuple
chain is followed by heap_lock_updated_tuple, which reports the problem
as HeapTupleSelfUpdated to its caller heap_lock_tuple, which in turn
propagates that code outwards possibly leading the calling code
(ExecLockRows) to believe that the tuple exists no longer.
Backpatch to 9.3. Only on 9.5 and newer this leads to a visible
failure, because of commit 27846f02c176; before that, heap_lock_tuple
skips the whole dance when the tuple is already locked by the same
transaction, because of the ancient HeapTupleSatisfiesUpdate behavior.
Still, the buggy condition may also exist in more convoluted scenarios
involving concurrent transactions, so it seems safer to fix the bug in
the old branches too.
Discussion:
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CABRT9RC81YUf1=jsmWopcKJEro=VoeG2ou6sPwyOUTx_qteRsg@mail.gmail.comhttps://www.postgresql.org/message-id/48d3eade-98d3-8b9a-477e-1a8dc32a724d@joh.to
but no database changes have been made since the last CommandCounterIncrement.
This should result in a significant improvement in the number of "commands"
that can typically be performed within a transaction before hitting the 2^32
CommandId size limit. In particular this buys back (and more) the possible
adverse consequences of my previous patch to fix plan caching behavior.
The implementation requires tracking whether the current CommandCounter
value has been "used" to mark any tuples. CommandCounter values stored into
snapshots are presumed not to be used for this purpose. This requires some
small executor changes, since the executor used to conflate the curcid of
the snapshot it was using with the command ID to mark output tuples with.
Separating these concepts allows some small simplifications in executor APIs.
Something for the TODO list: look into having CommandCounterIncrement not do
AcceptInvalidationMessages. It seems fairly bogus to be doing it there,
but exactly where to do it instead isn't clear, and I'm disinclined to mess
with asynchronous behavior during late beta.
keeping private state in each backend that has inserted and deleted the same
tuple during its current top-level transaction. This is sufficient since
there is no need to be able to determine the cmin/cmax from any other
transaction. This gets us back down to 23-byte headers, removing a penalty
paid in 8.0 to support subtransactions. Patch by Heikki Linnakangas, with
minor revisions by moi, following a design hashed out awhile back on the
pghackers list.
Alvaro Herrera
Tom Lane