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Andres Freund dad1539aec Fix possible HOT corruption when RECENTLY_DEAD changes to DEAD while pruning.
Since dc7420c2c9 the horizon used for pruning is determined "lazily". A more
accurate horizon is built on-demand, rather than in GetSnapshotData(). If a
horizon computation is triggered between two HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum() calls
for the same tuple, the result can change from RECENTLY_DEAD to DEAD.

heap_page_prune() can process the same tid multiple times (once following an
update chain, once "directly"). When the result of HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum()
of a tuple changes from RECENTLY_DEAD during the first access, to DEAD in the
second, the "tuple is DEAD and doesn't chain to anything else" path in
heap_prune_chain() can end up marking the target of a LP_REDIRECT ItemId
unused.

Initially not easily visible,
Once the target of a LP_REDIRECT ItemId is marked unused, a new tuple version
can reuse it. At that point the corruption may become visible, as index
entries pointing to the "original" redirect item, now point to a unrelated
tuple.

To fix, compute HTSV for all tuples on a page only once. This fixes the entire
class of problems of HTSV changing inside heap_page_prune(). However,
visibility changes can obviously still occur between HTSV checks inside
heap_page_prune() and outside (e.g. in lazy_scan_prune()).

The computation of HTSV is now done in bulk, in heap_page_prune(), rather than
on-demand in heap_prune_chain(). Besides being a bit simpler, it also is
faster: Memory accesses can happen sequentially, rather than in the order of
HOT chains.

There are other causes of HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum() results changing between
two visibility checks for the same tuple, even before dc7420c2c9. E.g.
HEAPTUPLE_INSERT_IN_PROGRESS can change to HEAPTUPLE_DEAD when a transaction
aborts between the two checks. None of the these other visibility status
changes are known to cause corruption, but heap_page_prune()'s approach makes
it hard to be confident.

A patch implementing a more fundamental redesign of heap_page_prune(), which
fixes this bug and simplifies pruning substantially, has been proposed by
Peter Geoghegan in
https://postgr.es/m/CAH2-WzmNk6V6tqzuuabxoxM8HJRaWU6h12toaS-bqYcLiht16A@mail.gmail.com

However, that redesign is larger change than desirable for backpatching. As
the new design still benefits from the batched visibility determination
introduced in this commit, it makes sense to commit this narrower fix to 14
and master, and then commit Peter's improvement in master.

The precise sequence required to trigger the bug is complicated and hard to do
exercise in an isolation test (until we have wait points). Due to that the
isolation test initially posted at
https://postgr.es/m/20211119003623.d3jusiytzjqwb62p%40alap3.anarazel.de
and updated in
https://postgr.es/m/20211122175914.ayk6gg6nvdwuhrzb%40alap3.anarazel.de
isn't committable.

A followup commit will introduce additional assertions, to detect problems
like this more easily.

Bug: #17255
Reported-By: Alexander Lakhin <exclusion@gmail.com>
Debugged-By: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Debugged-By: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Author: Andres Freund <andres@andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-By: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20211122175914.ayk6gg6nvdwuhrzb@alap3.anarazel.de
Backpatch: 14-, the oldest branch containing dc7420c2c9
2022-01-14 10:56:12 -08:00
config Pacify perlcritic. 2021-11-22 15:57:43 -05:00
contrib Revert error handling improvements for cryptohashes 2022-01-14 11:25:39 +09:00
doc Doc: fix bogus example about ambiguous timestamps. 2022-01-10 11:46:25 -05:00
src Fix possible HOT corruption when RECENTLY_DEAD changes to DEAD while pruning. 2022-01-14 10:56:12 -08:00
.dir-locals.el Make Emacs perl-mode indent more like perltidy. 2019-01-13 11:32:31 -08:00
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-12-18 09:13:13 +01:00
.git-blame-ignore-revs Add list of ignorable pgindent commits for git-blame. 2021-06-22 09:06:32 -07:00
.gitattributes gitattributes: Add new entry to silence whitespace error 2021-06-05 07:57:31 +02:00
.gitignore Support for optimizing and emitting code in LLVM JIT provider. 2018-03-22 11:05:22 -07:00
aclocal.m4 Probe $PROVE not $PERL while checking for modules needed by TAP tests. 2021-11-22 12:54:52 -05:00
configure Cope with cross-compiling when checking for a random-number source. 2021-11-30 17:18:04 -05:00
configure.ac Cope with cross-compiling when checking for a random-number source. 2021-11-30 17:18:04 -05:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2022 2022-01-07 19:04:56 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in add missing tag from commit b8c4261e5e 2021-07-01 15:47:47 -04:00
HISTORY Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00
Makefile Don't unset MAKEFLAGS in non-GNU Makefile. 2019-06-25 09:36:21 +12:00
README Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00
README.git Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00

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:

	https://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
https://www.postgresql.org/download/.  For more information look at our
web site located at https://www.postgresql.org/.