Fix NOTIFY to cope with I/O problems, such as out-of-disk-space.

tglsfdc · tglsfdc · commit ae90128dc5f8 · 2012-06-29T00:51:34.000-04:00
The LISTEN/NOTIFY subsystem got confused if SimpleLruZeroPage failed,
which would typically happen as a result of a write() failure while
attempting to dump a dirty pg_notify page out of memory.  Subsequently,
all attempts to send more NOTIFY messages would fail with messages like
"Could not read from file "pg_notify/nnnn" at offset nnnnn: Success".
Only restarting the server would clear this condition.  Per reports from
Kevin Grittner and Christoph Berg.

Back-patch to 9.0, where the problem was introduced during the
LISTEN/NOTIFY rewrite.
diff --git a/src/backend/commands/async.c b/src/backend/commands/async.c
@@ -1285,15 +1285,29 @@ static ListCell *
 asyncQueueAddEntries(ListCell *nextNotify)
 {
 	AsyncQueueEntry qe;
+	QueuePosition queue_head;
 	int			pageno;
 	int			offset;
 	int			slotno;
 
 	/* We hold both AsyncQueueLock and AsyncCtlLock during this operation */
 	LWLockAcquire(AsyncCtlLock, LW_EXCLUSIVE);
 
+	/*
+	 * We work with a local copy of QUEUE_HEAD, which we write back to shared
+	 * memory upon exiting.  The reason for this is that if we have to advance
+	 * to a new page, SimpleLruZeroPage might fail (out of disk space, for
+	 * instance), and we must not advance QUEUE_HEAD if it does.  (Otherwise,
+	 * subsequent insertions would try to put entries into a page that slru.c
+	 * thinks doesn't exist yet.)  So, use a local position variable.  Note
+	 * that if we do fail, any already-inserted queue entries are forgotten;
+	 * this is okay, since they'd be useless anyway after our transaction
+	 * rolls back.
+	 */
+	queue_head = QUEUE_HEAD;
+
 	/* Fetch the current page */
-	pageno = QUEUE_POS_PAGE(QUEUE_HEAD);
+	pageno = QUEUE_POS_PAGE(queue_head);
 	slotno = SimpleLruReadPage(AsyncCtl, pageno, true, InvalidTransactionId);
 	/* Note we mark the page dirty before writing in it */
 	AsyncCtl->shared->page_dirty[slotno] = true;
@@ -1305,7 +1319,7 @@ asyncQueueAddEntries(ListCell *nextNotify)
 		/* Construct a valid queue entry in local variable qe */
 		asyncQueueNotificationToEntry(n, &qe);
 
-		offset = QUEUE_POS_OFFSET(QUEUE_HEAD);
+		offset = QUEUE_POS_OFFSET(queue_head);
 
 		/* Check whether the entry really fits on the current page */
 		if (offset + qe.length <= QUEUE_PAGESIZE)
@@ -1331,8 +1345,8 @@ asyncQueueAddEntries(ListCell *nextNotify)
 			   &qe,
 			   qe.length);
 
-		/* Advance QUEUE_HEAD appropriately, and note if page is full */
-		if (asyncQueueAdvance(&(QUEUE_HEAD), qe.length))
+		/* Advance queue_head appropriately, and detect if page is full */
+		if (asyncQueueAdvance(&(queue_head), qe.length))
 		{
 			/*
 			 * Page is full, so we're done here, but first fill the next page
@@ -1342,12 +1356,15 @@ asyncQueueAddEntries(ListCell *nextNotify)
 			 * asyncQueueIsFull() ensured that there is room to create this
 			 * page without overrunning the queue.
 			 */
-			slotno = SimpleLruZeroPage(AsyncCtl, QUEUE_POS_PAGE(QUEUE_HEAD));
+			slotno = SimpleLruZeroPage(AsyncCtl, QUEUE_POS_PAGE(queue_head));
 			/* And exit the loop */
 			break;
 		}
 	}
 
+	/* Success, so update the global QUEUE_HEAD */
+	QUEUE_HEAD = queue_head;
+
 	LWLockRelease(AsyncCtlLock);
 
 	return nextNotify;
