Move rd_targblock, rd_fsm_nblocks, and rd_vm_nblocks from relcache to the smgr
relation entries, so that they will get reset to InvalidBlockNumber whenever
an smgr-level flush happens. Because we now send smgr invalidation messages
immediately (not at end of transaction) when a relation truncation occurs,
this ensures that other backends will reset their values before they next
access the relation. We no longer need the unreliable assumption that a
VACUUM that's doing a truncation will hold its AccessExclusive lock until
commit --- in fact, we can intentionally release that lock as soon as we've
completed the truncation. This patch therefore reverts (most of) Alvaro's
patch of 2009-11-10, as well as my marginal hacking on it yesterday. We can
also get rid of assorted no-longer-needed relcache flushes, which are far more
expensive than an smgr flush because they kill a lot more state.
In passing this patch fixes smgr_redo's failure to perform visibility-map
truncation, and cleans up some rather dubious assumptions in freespace.c and
visibilitymap.c about when rd_fsm_nblocks and rd_vm_nblocks can be out of
date.
"all tuples visible" flag in heap page headers. The flag update *must*
be applied before calling XLogInsert, but heap_update and the tuple
moving routines in VACUUM FULL were ignoring this rule. A crash and
replay could therefore leave the flag incorrectly set, causing rows
to appear visible in seqscans when they should not be. This might explain
recent reports of data corruption from Jeff Ross and others.
In passing, do a bit of editorialization on comments in visibilitymap.c.
heap page, where a set bit indicates that all tuples on the page are
visible to all transactions, and the page therefore doesn't need
vacuuming. It is stored in a new relation fork.
Lazy vacuum uses the visibility map to skip pages that don't need
vacuuming. Vacuum is also responsible for setting the bits in the map.
In the future, this can hopefully be used to implement index-only-scans,
but we can't currently guarantee that the visibility map is always 100%
up-to-date.
In addition to the visibility map, there's a new PD_ALL_VISIBLE flag on
each heap page, also indicating that all tuples on the page are visible to
all transactions. It's important that this flag is kept up-to-date. It
is also used to skip visibility tests in sequential scans, which gives a
small performance gain on seqscans.
Robert Haas
Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane
Heikki Linnakangas