durable_rename_excl() attempts to avoid overwriting any existing files
by using link() and unlink(), and it falls back to rename() on some
platforms (aka WIN32), which offers no such overwrite protection. Most
callers use durable_rename_excl() just in case there is an existing
file, but in practice there shouldn't be one (see below for more
details).
Furthermore, failures during durable_rename_excl() can result in
multiple hard links to the same file. As per Nathan's tests, it is
possible to end up with two links to the same file in pg_wal after a
crash just before unlink() during WAL recycling. Specifically, the test
produced links to the same file for the current WAL file and the next
one because the half-recycled WAL file was re-recycled upon restarting,
leading to WAL corruption.
This change replaces all the calls of durable_rename_excl() to
durable_rename(). This removes the protection against accidentally
overwriting an existing file, but some platforms are already living
without it and ordinarily there shouldn't be one. The function itself
is left around in case any extensions are using it. It will be removed
on HEAD via a follow-up commit.
Here is a summary of the existing callers of durable_rename_excl() (see
second discussion link at the bottom), replaced by this commit. First,
basic_archive used it to avoid overwriting an archive concurrently
created by another server, but as mentioned above, it will still
overwrite files on some platforms. Second, xlog.c uses it to recycle
past WAL segments, where an overwrite should not happen (origin of the
change at f0e37a8) because there are protections about the WAL segment
to select when recycling an entry. The third and last area is related
to the write of timeline history files. writeTimeLineHistory() will
write a new timeline history file at the end of recovery on promotion,
so there should be no such files for the same timeline.
What remains is writeTimeLineHistoryFile(), that can be used in parallel
by a WAL receiver and the startup process, and some digging of the
buildfarm shows that EEXIST from a WAL receiver can happen with an error
of "could not link file \"pg_wal/xlogtemp.NN\" to \"pg_wal/MM.history\",
which would cause an automatic restart of the WAL receiver as it is
promoted to FATAL, hence this should improve the stability of the WAL
receiver as rename() would overwrite an existing TLI history file
already fetched by the startup process at recovery.
This is a bug fix, but knowing the unlikeliness of the problem involving
one or more crashes at an exceptionally bad moment, no backpatch is
done. Also, I want to be careful with such changes (aaa3aed did the
opposite of this change by removing HAVE_WORKING_LINK so as Windows
would do a link() rather than a rename() but this was not
concurrent-safe). A backpatch could be revisited in the future. This
is the second time this change is attempted, ccfbd92 being the first
one, but this time no assertions are added for the case of a TLI history
file written concurrently by the WAL receiver or the startup process
because we can expect one to exist (some of the TAP tests are able to
trigger with a proper timing).
Author: Nathan Bossart
Reviewed-by: Robert Haas, Kyotaro Horiguchi, Michael Paquier
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220407182954.GA1231544@nathanxps13
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/Ym6GZbqQdlalSKSG@paquier.xyz
This reverts commits 2c902bb and ccfbd92. Per buildfarm members
kestrel, rorqual and calliphoridae, the assertions checking that a TLI
history file should not exist when created by a WAL receiver have been
failing, and switching to durable_rename() over durable_rename_excl()
would cause the newest TLI history file to overwrite the existing one.
We need to think harder about such cases, so revert the new logic for
now.
Note that all the failures have been reported in the test
025_stuck_on_old_timeline.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/511362.1651116498@sss.pgh.pa.us
durable_rename_excl() attempts to avoid overwriting any existing files
by using link() and unlink(), falling back to rename() on some platforms
(e.g., Windows where link() followed by unlink() is not concurrent-safe,
see 909b449). Most callers of durable_rename_excl() use it just in case
there is an existing file, but it happens that for all of them we never
expect a target file to exist (WAL segment recycling, creation of
timeline history file and basic_archive).
basic_archive used durable_rename_excl() to avoid overwriting an archive
concurrently created by another server. Now, there is a stat() call to
avoid overwriting an existing archive a couple of lines above, so note
that this change opens a small TOCTOU window in this module between the
stat() call and durable_rename().
Furthermore, as mentioned in the top comment of durable_rename_excl(),
this routine can result in multiple hard links to the same file and data
corruption, with two or more links to the same file in pg_wal/ if a
crash happens before the unlink() call during WAL recycling.
Specifically, this would produce links to the same file for the current
WAL file and the next one because the half-recycled WAL file was
re-recycled during crash recovery of a follow-up cluster restart.
This change replaces all calls to durable_rename_excl() with
durable_rename(). This removes the protection against accidentally
overwriting an existing file, but some platforms are already living
without it, and all those code paths never expect an existing file (a
couple of assertions are added to check after that, in case).
This is a bug fix, but knowing the unlikeliness of the problem involving
one of more crashes at an exceptionally bad moment, no backpatch is
done. This could be revisited in the future.
Author: Nathan Bossart
Reviewed-by: Robert Haas, Kyotaro Horiguchi, Michael Paquier
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220407182954.GA1231544@nathanxps13
Commit 75d22069e tried to throw a warning for setting a custom GUC whose
prefix belongs to a previously-loaded extension, if there is no such GUC
defined by the extension. But that caused unstable behavior with
parallel workers, because workers don't necessarily load extensions and
GUCs in the same order their leader did. To make that work safely, we
have to completely disallow the case. We now actually remove any such
GUCs at the time of initial extension load, and then throw an error not
just a warning if you try to add one later. While this might create a
compatibility issue for a few people, the improvement in error-detection
capability seems worth it; it's hard to believe that there's any good
use-case for choosing such GUC names.
This also un-reverts 5609cc01c (Rename EmitWarningsOnPlaceholders() to
MarkGUCPrefixReserved()), since that function's old name is now even
more of a misnomer.
Florin Irion and Tom Lane
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/1902182.1640711215@sss.pgh.pa.us
Running a shell command for each file to be archived has a lot of
overhead and may not offer as much error checking as you want, or the
exact semantics that you want. So, offer the option to call a loadable
module for each file to be archived, rather than running a shell command.
Also, add a 'basic_archive' contrib module as an example implementation
that archives to a local directory.
Nathan Bossart, with a little bit of kibitzing by me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/20220202224433.GA1036711@nathanxps13
Andres Freund
Michael Paquier
Tom Lane
Peter Eisentraut
Robert Haas