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Tom Lane 8939020853 Run the postmaster's signal handlers without SA_RESTART.
The postmaster keeps signals blocked everywhere except while waiting
for something to happen in ServerLoop().  The code expects that the
select(2) will be cancelled with EINTR if an interrupt occurs; without
that, followup actions that should be performed by ServerLoop() itself
will be delayed.  However, some platforms interpret the SA_RESTART
signal flag as meaning that they should restart rather than cancel
the select(2).  Worse yet, some of them restart it with the original
timeout delay, meaning that a steady stream of signal interrupts can
prevent ServerLoop() from iterating at all if there are no incoming
connection requests.

Observable symptoms of this, on an affected platform such as HPUX 10,
include extremely slow parallel query startup (possibly as much as
30 seconds) and failure to update timestamps on the postmaster's sockets
and lockfiles when no new connections arrive for a long time.

We can fix this by running the postmaster's signal handlers without
SA_RESTART.  That would be quite a scary change if the range of code
where signals are accepted weren't so tiny, but as it is, it seems
safe enough.  (Note that postmaster children do, and must, reset all
the handlers before unblocking signals; so this change should not
affect any child process.)

There is talk of rewriting the postmaster to use a WaitEventSet and
not do signal response work in signal handlers, at which point it might
be appropriate to revert this patch.  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
2017-04-24 13:00:30 -04:00
config Remove use of Jade and DSSSL 2017-04-06 22:09:11 -04:00
contrib Fix new warnings from GCC 7 2017-04-17 13:59:46 -04:00
doc doc: Update link 2017-04-21 19:42:01 -04:00
src Run the postmaster's signal handlers without SA_RESTART. 2017-04-24 13:00:30 -04:00
.dir-locals.el emacs: Set indent-tabs-mode in perl-mode 2015-04-12 23:53:23 -04:00
.gitattributes Remove contrib/tsearch2. 2017-02-13 11:06:11 -05:00
.gitignore Allow .so minor version numbers above 9 in .gitignore. 2016-08-15 17:35:35 -04:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2017 2017-01-03 12:37:53 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in Have "make coverage" recurse into contrib as well 2016-09-05 18:44:36 -03:00
HISTORY Improve text of stub HISTORY file. 2014-02-12 18:16:17 -05:00
Makefile Allow make check in PL directories 2011-02-15 06:52:12 +02:00
README Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
README.git Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
aclocal.m4 ICU support 2017-03-23 15:28:48 -04:00
configure Don't include sys/poll.h anymore. 2017-04-23 16:11:35 -07:00
configure.in Don't include sys/poll.h anymore. 2017-04-23 16:11:35 -07:00

README

PostgreSQL Database Management System
=====================================

This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL
database management system.

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system
that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including
transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types
and functions.  This distribution also contains C language bindings.

PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here:

	http://www.postgresql.org/download

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install
PostgreSQL.  That file also lists supported operating systems and
hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other
software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL
system.  Copyright and license information can be found in the
file COPYRIGHT.  A comprehensive documentation set is included in this
distribution; it can be read as described in the installation
instructions.

The latest version of this software may be obtained at
http://www.postgresql.org/download/.  For more information look at our
web site located at http://www.postgresql.org/.