Traditionally we've unblocked signals, called select(2), and then blocked
signals again. The code expects that the select() will be cancelled with
EINTR if an interrupt occurs; but there's a race condition, which is that
an already-pending signal will be delivered as soon as we unblock, and then
when we reach select() there will be nothing preventing it from waiting.
This can result in a long delay before we perform any action that
ServerLoop was supposed to have taken in response to the signal. As with
the somewhat-similar symptoms fixed by commit 893902085, the main practical
problem is slow launching of parallel workers. The window for trouble is
usually pretty short, corresponding to one iteration of ServerLoop; but
it's not negligible.
To fix, use pselect(2) in place of select(2) where available, as that's
designed to solve exactly this problem. Where not available, we continue
to use the old way, and are no worse off than before.
pselect(2) has been required by POSIX since about 2001, so most modern
platforms should have it. A bigger portability issue is that some
implementations are said to be non-atomic, ie pselect() isn't really
any different from unblock/select/reblock. Still, we're no worse off
than before on such a platform.
There is talk of rewriting the postmaster to use a WaitEventSet and
not do signal response work in signal handlers, at which point this
could be reverted, since we'd be using a self-pipe to solve the race
condition. But that's not happening before v11 at the earliest.
Back-patch to 9.6. The problem exists much further back, but the
worst symptom arises only in connection with parallel query, so it
does not seem worth taking any portability risks in older branches.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/9205.1492833041@sss.pgh.pa.us
81069a9efc