When we create a temporary copy of the old node buffer, in stack, we mustn't
leak that into any of the long-lived data structures. Before this patch,
when we called gistPopItupFromNodeBuffer(), it got added to the array of
"loaded buffers". After gistRelocateBuildBuffersOnSplit() exits, the
pointer added to the loaded buffers array points to garbage. Often that goes
unnotied, because when we go through the array of loaded buffers to unload
them, buffers with a NULL pageBuffer are ignored, which can often happen by
accident even if the pointer points to garbage.
This patch fixes that by marking the temporary copy in stack explicitly as
temporary, and refrain from adding buffers marked as temporary to the array
of loaded buffers.
While we're at it, initialize nodeBuffer->pageBlocknum to InvalidBlockNumber
and improve comments a bit. This isn't strictly necessary, but makes
debugging easier.
Previously it was thought that it's impossible as the code stands, because
insertions create buffers as tuples are cascaded downwards, and index
split also creaters buffers eagerly for all halves. But the example from
Jay Levitt demonstrates that it can happen, when the root page is split.
It's in fact OK if the buffer doesn't exist, so we just need to remove the
sanity check. In fact, we've been discussing the possibility of destroying
empty buffers to conserve memory, which would render the sanity check
completely useless anyway.
Fix by Alexander Korotkov
When building a GiST index that doesn't fit in cache, buffers are attached
to some internal nodes in the index. This speeds up the build by avoiding
random I/O that would otherwise be needed to traverse all the way down the
tree to the find right leaf page for tuple.
Alexander Korotkov
Heikki Linnakangas
Bruce Momjian