Each WAL record now carries information about the modified relation and
block(s) in a standardized format. That makes it easier to write tools that
need that information, like pg_rewind, prefetching the blocks to speed up
recovery, etc.
There's a whole new API for building WAL records, replacing the XLogRecData
chains used previously. The new API consists of XLogRegister* functions,
which are called for each buffer and chunk of data that is added to the
record. The new API also gives more control over when a full-page image is
written, by passing flags to the XLogRegisterBuffer function.
This also simplifies the XLogReadBufferForRedo() calls. The function can dig
the relation and block number from the WAL record, so they no longer need to
be passed as arguments.
For the convenience of redo routines, XLogReader now disects each WAL record
after reading it, copying the main data part and the per-block data into
MAXALIGNed buffers. The data chunks are not aligned within the WAL record,
but the redo routines can assume that the pointers returned by XLogRecGet*
functions are. Redo routines are now passed the XLogReaderState, which
contains the record in the already-disected format, instead of the plain
XLogRecord.
The new record format also makes the fixed size XLogRecord header smaller,
by removing the xl_len field. The length of the "main data" portion is now
stored at the end of the WAL record, and there's a separate header after
XLogRecord for it. The alignment padding at the end of XLogRecord is also
removed. This compansates for the fact that the new format would otherwise
be more bulky than the old format.
Reviewed by Andres Freund, Amit Kapila, Michael Paquier, Alvaro Herrera,
Fujii Masao.
There are four weaknesses in728f152e07f998d2cb4fe5f24ec8da2c3bda98f2:
* append_init() in heapdesc.c was ugly and required that rm_identify
return values are only valid till the next call. Instead just add a
couple more switch() cases for the INIT_PAGE cases. Now the returned
value will always be valid.
* a couple rm_identify() callbacks missed masking xl_info with
~XLR_INFO_MASK.
* pg_xlogdump didn't map a NULL rm_identify to UNKNOWN or a similar
string.
* append_init() was called when id=NULL - which should never actually
happen. But it's better to be careful.
This is primarily useful for the upcoming pg_xlogdump --stats feature,
but also allows to remove some duplicated code in the rmgr_desc
routines.
Due to the separation and harmonization, the output of dipsplayed
records changes somewhat. But since this isn't enduser oriented
content that's ok.
It's potentially desirable to further change pg_xlogdump's display of
records. It previously wasn't possible to show the record type
separately from the description forcing it to be in the last
column. But that's better done in a separate commit.
Author: Abhijit Menon-Sen, slightly editorialized by me
Reviewed-By: Álvaro Herrera, Andres Freund, and Heikki Linnakangas
Discussion: 20140604104716.GA3989@toroid.org
Commit a730183926 created rather a mess by
putting dependencies on backend-only include files into include/common.
We really shouldn't do that. To clean it up:
* Move TABLESPACE_VERSION_DIRECTORY back to its longtime home in
catalog/catalog.h. We won't consider this symbol part of the FE/BE API.
* Push enum ForkNumber from relfilenode.h into relpath.h. We'll consider
relpath.h as the source of truth for fork numbers, since relpath.c was
already partially serving that function, and anyway relfilenode.h was
kind of a random place for that enum.
* So, relfilenode.h now includes relpath.h rather than vice-versa. This
direction of dependency is fine. (That allows most, but not quite all,
of the existing explicit #includes of relpath.h to go away again.)
* Push forkname_to_number from catalog.c to relpath.c, just to centralize
fork number stuff a bit better.
* Push GetDatabasePath from catalog.c to relpath.c; it was rather odd
that the previous commit didn't keep this together with relpath().
* To avoid needing relfilenode.h in common/, redefine the underlying
function (now called GetRelationPath) as taking separate OID arguments,
and make the APIs using RelFileNode or RelFileNodeBackend into macro
wrappers. (The macros have a potential multiple-eval risk, but none of
the existing call sites have an issue with that; one of them had such a
risk already anyway.)
* Fix failure to follow the directions when "init" fork type was added;
specifically, the errhint in forkname_to_number wasn't updated, and neither
was the SGML documentation for pg_relation_size().
* Fix tablespace-path-too-long check in CreateTableSpace() to account for
fork-name component of maximum-length pathnames. This requires putting
FORKNAMECHARS into a header file, but it was rather useless (and
actually unreferenced) where it was.
The last couple of items are potentially back-patchable bug fixes,
if anyone is sufficiently excited about them; but personally I'm not.
Per a gripe from Christoph Berg about how include/common wasn't
self-contained.
SnapshotNow scans have the undesirable property that, in the face of
concurrent updates, the scan can fail to see either the old or the new
versions of the row. In many cases, we work around this by requiring
DDL operations to hold AccessExclusiveLock on the object being
modified; in some cases, the existing locking is inadequate and random
failures occur as a result. This commit doesn't change anything
related to locking, but will hopefully pave the way to allowing lock
strength reductions in the future.
The major issue has held us back from making this change in the past
is that taking an MVCC snapshot is significantly more expensive than
using a static special snapshot such as SnapshotNow. However, testing
of various worst-case scenarios reveals that this problem is not
severe except under fairly extreme workloads. To mitigate those
problems, we avoid retaking the MVCC snapshot for each new scan;
instead, we take a new snapshot only when invalidation messages have
been processed. The catcache machinery already requires that
invalidation messages be sent before releasing the related heavyweight
lock; else other backends might rely on locally-cached data rather
than scanning the catalog at all. Thus, making snapshot reuse
dependent on the same guarantees shouldn't break anything that wasn't
already subtly broken.
Patch by me. Review by Michael Paquier and Andres Freund.
This enables non-backend code, such as pg_xlogdump, to use it easily.
The previous location, in src/backend/catalog/catalog.c, made that
essentially impossible because that file depends on many backend-only
facilities; so this needs to live separately.
Heikki Linnakangas
Andres Freund
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Robert Haas
Alvaro Herrera