The new relation extension logic, introduced in 00d1e02be2, could lead to
slowdowns in some scenarios. E.g., when loading narrow rows into a table using
COPY, the caller of RelationGetBufferForTuple() will only request a small
number of pages. Without concurrency, we just extended using pwritev() in that
case. However, if there is *some* concurrency, we switched between extending
by a small number of pages and a larger number of pages, depending on the
number of waiters for the relation extension logic. However, some
filesystems, XFS in particular, do not perform well when switching between
extending files using fallocate() and pwritev().
To avoid that issue, remember the number of prior relation extensions in
BulkInsertState and extend more aggressively if there were prior relation
extensions. That not just avoids the aforementioned slowdown, but also leads
to noticeable performance gains in other situations, primarily due to
extending more aggressively when there is no concurrency. I should have done
it this way from the get go.
Reported-by: Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>
Author: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAD21AoDvDmUQeJtZrau1ovnT_smN940=Kp6mszNGK3bq9yRN6g@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch: 16-, where the new relation extension code was added
82a4edabd2