Move page initialization from RelationAddExtraBlocks() to use, take 2.

Previously we initialized pages when bulk extending in
RelationAddExtraBlocks(). That has a major disadvantage: It ties
RelationAddExtraBlocks() to heap, as other types of storage are likely
to need different amounts of special space, have different amount of
free space (previously determined by PageGetHeapFreeSpace()).

That we're relying on initializing pages, but not WAL logging the
initialization, also means the risk for getting
"WARNING:  relation \"%s\" page %u is uninitialized --- fixing"
style warnings in vacuums after crashes/immediate shutdowns, is
considerably higher. The warning sounds much more serious than what
they are.

Fix those two issues together by not initializing pages in
RelationAddExtraPages() (but continue to do so in
RelationGetBufferForTuple(), which is linked much more closely to
heap), and accepting uninitialized pages as normal in
vacuumlazy.c. When vacuumlazy encounters an empty page it now adds it
to the FSM, but does nothing else.  We chose to not issue a debug
message, much less a warning in that case - it seems rarely useful,
and quite likely to scare people unnecessarily.

For now empty pages aren't added to the VM, because standbys would not
re-discover such pages after a promotion. In contrast to other sources
for empty pages, there's no corresponding WAL records triggering FSM
updates during replay.

Previously when extending the relation, there was a moment between
extending the relation, and acquiring an exclusive lock on the new
page, in which another backend could lock the page. To avoid new
content being put on that new page, vacuumlazy needed to acquire the
extension lock for a brief moment when encountering a new page. A
second corner case, only working somewhat by accident, was that
RelationGetBufferForTuple() sometimes checks the last page in a
relation for free space, without consulting the FSM; that only worked
because PageGetHeapFreeSpace() interprets the zero page header in a
new page as no free space.  The lack of handling this properly
required reverting the previous attempt in 684200543b.

This issue can be solved by using RBM_ZERO_AND_LOCK when extending the
relation, thereby avoiding this window. There's some added complexity
when RelationGetBufferForTuple() is called with another buffer (for
updates), to avoid deadlocks, but that's rarely hit at runtime.

Author: Andres Freund
Reviewed-By: Tom Lane
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20181219083945.6khtgm36mivonhva@alap3.anarazel.de

1 files changed, 44 insertions, 38 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/heap/vacuumlazy.c b/src/backend/access/heap/vacuumlazy.c
index 37aa484ec3a..26dfb0c7e0f 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/heap/vacuumlazy.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/heap/vacuumlazy.c
@@ -860,43 +860,46 @@ lazy_scan_heap(Relation onerel, int options, LVRelStats *vacrelstats,
 
 		if (PageIsNew(page))
 		{
+			bool		still_new;
+
 			/*
-			 * An all-zeroes page could be left over if a backend extends the
-			 * relation but crashes before initializing the page. Reclaim such
-			 * pages for use.
-			 *
-			 * We have to be careful here because we could be looking at a
-			 * page that someone has just added to the relation and not yet
-			 * been able to initialize (see RelationGetBufferForTuple). To
-			 * protect against that, release the buffer lock, grab the
-			 * relation extension lock momentarily, and re-lock the buffer. If
-			 * the page is still uninitialized by then, it must be left over
-			 * from a crashed backend, and we can initialize it.
+			 * All-zeroes pages can be left over if either a backend extends
+			 * the relation by a single page, but crashes before the newly
+			 * initialized page has been written out, or when bulk-extending
+			 * the relation (which creates a number of empty pages at the tail
+			 * end of the relation, but enters them into the FSM).
 			 *
-			 * We don't really need the relation lock when this is a new or
-			 * temp relation, but it's probably not worth the code space to
-			 * check that, since this surely isn't a critical path.
+			 * Make sure these pages are in the FSM, to ensure they can be
+			 * reused. Do that by testing if there's any space recorded for
+			 * the page. If not, enter it.
 			 *
-			 * Note: the comparable code in vacuum.c need not worry because
-			 * it's got exclusive lock on the whole relation.
+			 * Note we do not enter the page into the visibilitymap. That has
+			 * the downside that we repeatedly visit this page in subsequent
+			 * vacuums, but otherwise we'll never not discover the space on a
+			 * promoted standby. The harm of repeated checking ought to
+			 * normally not be too bad - the space usually should be used at
+			 * some point, otherwise there wouldn't be any regular vacuums.
 			 */
-			LockBuffer(buf, BUFFER_LOCK_UNLOCK);
-			LockRelationForExtension(onerel, ExclusiveLock);
-			UnlockRelationForExtension(onerel, ExclusiveLock);
-			LockBufferForCleanup(buf);
-			if (PageIsNew(page))
+
+			/*
+			 * Perform checking of FSM after releasing lock, the fsm is
+			 * approximate, after all.
+			 */
+			still_new = PageIsNew(page);
+			UnlockReleaseBuffer(buf);
+
+			if (still_new)
 			{
-				ereport(WARNING,
-						(errmsg("relation \"%s\" page %u is uninitialized --- fixing",
-								relname, blkno)));
-				PageInit(page, BufferGetPageSize(buf), 0);
 				empty_pages++;
-			}
-			freespace = PageGetHeapFreeSpace(page);
-			MarkBufferDirty(buf);
-			UnlockReleaseBuffer(buf);
 
-			RecordPageWithFreeSpace(onerel, blkno, freespace);
+				if (GetRecordedFreeSpace(onerel, blkno) == 0)
+				{
+					Size		freespace;
+
+					freespace = BufferGetPageSize(buf) - SizeOfPageHeaderData;
+					RecordPageWithFreeSpace(onerel, blkno, freespace);
+				}
+			}
 			continue;
 		}
 
@@ -905,7 +908,10 @@ lazy_scan_heap(Relation onerel, int options, LVRelStats *vacrelstats,
 			empty_pages++;
 			freespace = PageGetHeapFreeSpace(page);
 
-			/* empty pages are always all-visible and all-frozen */
+			/*
+			 * Empty pages are always all-visible and all-frozen (note that
+			 * the same is currently not true for new pages, see above).
+			 */
 			if (!PageIsAllVisible(page))
 			{
 				START_CRIT_SECTION();
@@ -1639,12 +1645,13 @@ lazy_check_needs_freeze(Buffer buf, bool *hastup)
 
 	*hastup = false;
 
-	/* If we hit an uninitialized page, we want to force vacuuming it. */
-	if (PageIsNew(page))
-		return true;
-
-	/* Quick out for ordinary empty page. */
-	if (PageIsEmpty(page))
+	/*
+	 * New and empty pages, obviously, don't contain tuples. We could make
+	 * sure that the page is registered in the FSM, but it doesn't seem worth
+	 * waiting for a cleanup lock just for that, especially because it's
+	 * likely that the pin holder will do so.
+	 */
+	if (PageIsNew(page) || PageIsEmpty(page))
 		return false;
 
 	maxoff = PageGetMaxOffsetNumber(page);
@@ -2029,7 +2036,6 @@ count_nondeletable_pages(Relation onerel, LVRelStats *vacrelstats)
 
 		if (PageIsNew(page) || PageIsEmpty(page))
 		{
-			/* PageIsNew probably shouldn't happen... */
 			UnlockReleaseBuffer(buf);
 			continue;
 		}