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path: root/src/backend/postmaster/checkpointer.c
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2019-03-19Make checkpoint requests more robust.Tom Lane
Commit 6f6a6d8b1 introduced a delay of up to 2 seconds if we're trying to request a checkpoint but the checkpointer hasn't started yet (or, much less likely, our kill() call fails). However buildfarm experience shows that that's not quite enough for slow or heavily-loaded machines. There's no good reason to assume that the checkpointer won't start eventually, so we may as well make the timeout much longer, say 60 sec. However, if the caller didn't say CHECKPOINT_WAIT, it seems like a bad idea to be waiting at all, much less for as long as 60 sec. We can remove the need for that, and make this whole thing more robust, by adjusting the code so that the existence of a pending checkpoint request is clear from the contents of shared memory, and making sure that the checkpointer process will notice it at startup even if it did not get a signal. In this way there's no need for a non-CHECKPOINT_WAIT call to wait at all; if it can't send the signal, it can nonetheless assume that the checkpointer will eventually service the request. A potential downside of this change is that "kill -INT" on the checkpointer process is no longer enough to trigger a checkpoint, should anyone be relying on something so hacky. But there's no obvious reason to do it like that rather than issuing a plain old CHECKPOINT command, so we'll assume that nobody is. There doesn't seem to be a way to preserve this undocumented quasi-feature without introducing race conditions. Since a principal reason for messing with this is to prevent intermittent buildfarm failures, back-patch to all supported branches. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/27830.1552752475@sss.pgh.pa.us
2018-08-08Don't run atexit callbacks in quickdie signal handlers.Heikki Linnakangas
exit() is not async-signal safe. Even if the libc implementation is, 3rd party libraries might have installed unsafe atexit() callbacks. After receiving SIGQUIT, we really just want to exit as quickly as possible, so we don't really want to run the atexit() callbacks anyway. The original report by Jimmy Yih was a self-deadlock in startup_die(). However, this patch doesn't address that scenario; the signal handling while waiting for the startup packet is more complicated. But at least this alleviates similar problems in the SIGQUIT handlers, like that reported by Asim R P later in the same thread. Backpatch to 9.3 (all supported versions). Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAOMx_OAuRUHiAuCg2YgicZLzPVv5d9_H4KrL_OFsFP%3DVPekigA%40mail.gmail.com
2016-08-27Add macros to make AllocSetContextCreate() calls simpler and safer.Tom Lane
I found that half a dozen (nearly 5%) of our AllocSetContextCreate calls had typos in the context-sizing parameters. While none of these led to especially significant problems, they did create minor inefficiencies, and it's now clear that expecting people to copy-and-paste those calls accurately is not a great idea. Let's reduce the risk of future errors by introducing single macros that encapsulate the common use-cases. Three such macros are enough to cover all but two special-purpose contexts; those two calls can be left as-is, I think. While this patch doesn't in itself improve matters for third-party extensions, it doesn't break anything for them either, and they can gradually adopt the simplified notation over time. In passing, change TopMemoryContext to use the default allocation parameters. Formerly it could only be extended 8K at a time. That was probably reasonable when this code was written; but nowadays we create many more contexts than we did then, so that it's not unusual to have a couple hundred K in TopMemoryContext, even without considering various dubious code that sticks other things there. There seems no good reason not to let it use growing blocks like most other contexts. Back-patch to 9.6, mostly because that's still close enough to HEAD that it's easy to do so, and keeping the branches in sync can be expected to avoid some future back-patching pain. The bugs fixed by these changes don't seem to be significant enough to justify fixing them further back. Discussion: <21072.1472321324@sss.pgh.pa.us>
2016-03-10Provide much better wait information in pg_stat_activity.Robert Haas
When a process is waiting for a heavyweight lock, we will now indicate the type of heavyweight lock for which it is waiting. Also, you can now see when a process is waiting for a lightweight lock - in which case we will indicate the individual lock name or the tranche, as appropriate - or for a buffer pin. Amit Kapila, Ildus Kurbangaliev, reviewed by me. Lots of helpful discussion and suggestions by many others, including Alexander Korotkov, Vladimir Borodin, and many others.
2016-01-02Update copyright for 2016Bruce Momjian
Backpatch certain files through 9.1
2015-10-06Remove more volatile qualifiers.Robert Haas
Prior to commit 0709b7ee72e4bc71ad07b7120acd117265ab51d0, access to variables within a spinlock-protected critical section had to be done through a volatile pointer, but that should no longer be necessary. This continues work begun in df4077cda2eae3eb4a5cf387da0c1e7616e73204 and 6ba4ecbf477e0b25dd7bde1b0c4e07fc2da19348. Thomas Munro and Michael Paquier
2015-06-29Also trigger restartpoints based on max_wal_size on standby.Heikki Linnakangas
When archive recovery and restartpoints were initially introduced, checkpoint_segments was ignored on the grounds that the files restored from archive don't consume any space in the recovery server. That was changed in later releases, but even then it was arguably a feature rather than a bug, as performing restartpoints as often as checkpoints during normal operation might be excessive, but you might nevertheless not want to waste a lot of space for pre-allocated WAL by setting checkpoint_segments to a high value. But now that we have separate min_wal_size and max_wal_size settings, you can bound WAL usage with max_wal_size, and still avoid consuming excessive space usage by setting min_wal_size to a lower value, so that argument is moot. There are still some issues with actually limiting the space usage to max_wal_size: restartpoints in recovery can only start after seeing the checkpoint record, while a checkpoint starts flushing buffers as soon as the redo-pointer is set. Restartpoint is paced to happen at the same leisurily speed, determined by checkpoint_completion_target, as checkpoints, but because they are started later, max_wal_size can be exceeded by upto one checkpoint cycle's worth of WAL, depending on checkpoint_completion_target. But that seems better than not trying at all, and max_wal_size is a soft limit anyway. The documentation already claimed that max_wal_size is obeyed in recovery, so this just fixes the behaviour to match the docs. However, add some weasel-words there to mention that max_wal_size may well be exceeded by some amount in recovery.
2015-02-23Replace checkpoint_segments with min_wal_size and max_wal_size.Heikki Linnakangas
Instead of having a single knob (checkpoint_segments) that both triggers checkpoints, and determines how many checkpoints to recycle, they are now separate concerns. There is still an internal variable called CheckpointSegments, which triggers checkpoints. But it no longer determines how many segments to recycle at a checkpoint. That is now auto-tuned by keeping a moving average of the distance between checkpoints (in bytes), and trying to keep that many segments in reserve. The advantage of this is that you can set max_wal_size very high, but the system won't actually consume that much space if there isn't any need for it. The min_wal_size sets a floor for that; you can effectively disable the auto-tuning behavior by setting min_wal_size equal to max_wal_size. The max_wal_size setting is now the actual target size of WAL at which a new checkpoint is triggered, instead of the distance between checkpoints. Previously, you could calculate the actual WAL usage with the formula "(2 + checkpoint_completion_target) * checkpoint_segments + 1". With this patch, you set the desired WAL usage with max_wal_size, and the system calculates the appropriate CheckpointSegments with the reverse of that formula. That's a lot more intuitive for administrators to set. Reviewed by Amit Kapila and Venkata Balaji N.
2015-02-20Use FLEXIBLE_ARRAY_MEMBER in some more places.Tom Lane
Fix a batch of structs that are only visible within individual .c files. Michael Paquier
2015-01-14Add a default local latch for use in signal handlers.Andres Freund
To do so, move InitializeLatchSupport() into the new common process initialization functions, and add a new global variable MyLatch. MyLatch is usable as soon InitPostmasterChild() has been called (i.e. very early during startup). Initially it points to a process local latch that exists in all processes. InitProcess/InitAuxiliaryProcess then replaces that local latch with PGPROC->procLatch. During shutdown the reverse happens. This is primarily advantageous for two reasons: For one it simplifies dealing with the shared process latch, especially in signal handlers, because instead of having to check for MyProc, MyLatch can be used unconditionally. For another, a later patch that makes FEs/BE communication use latches, now can rely on the existence of a latch, even before having gone through InitProcess. Discussion: 20140927191243.GD5423@alap3.anarazel.de
2015-01-14Commonalize process startup code.Andres Freund
Move common code, that was duplicated in every postmaster child/every standalone process, into two functions in miscinit.c. Not only does that already result in a fair amount of net code reduction but it also makes it much easier to remove more duplication in the future. The prime motivation wasn't code deduplication though, but easier addition of new common code.
2015-01-06Update copyright for 2015Bruce Momjian
Backpatch certain files through 9.0
2014-12-18Improve hash_create's API for selecting simple-binary-key hash functions.Tom Lane
Previously, if you wanted anything besides C-string hash keys, you had to specify a custom hashing function to hash_create(). Nearly all such callers were specifying tag_hash or oid_hash; which is tedious, and rather error-prone, since a caller could easily miss the opportunity to optimize by using hash_uint32 when appropriate. Replace this with a design whereby callers using simple binary-data keys just specify HASH_BLOBS and don't need to mess with specific support functions. hash_create() itself will take care of optimizing when the key size is four bytes. This nets out saving a few hundred bytes of code space, and offers a measurable performance improvement in tidbitmap.c (which was not exploiting the opportunity to use hash_uint32 for its 4-byte keys). There might be some wins elsewhere too, I didn't analyze closely. In future we could look into offering a similar optimized hashing function for 8-byte keys. Under this design that could be done in a centralized and machine-independent fashion, whereas getting it right for keys of platform-dependent sizes would've been notationally painful before. For the moment, the old way still works fine, so as not to break source code compatibility for loadable modules. Eventually we might want to remove tag_hash and friends from the exported API altogether, since there's no real need for them to be explicitly referenced from outside dynahash.c. Teodor Sigaev and Tom Lane
2014-06-30Fix and enhance the assertion of no palloc's in a critical section.Heikki Linnakangas
The assertion failed if WAL_DEBUG or LWLOCK_STATS was enabled; fix that by using separate memory contexts for the allocations made within those code blocks. This patch introduces a mechanism for marking any memory context as allowed in a critical section. Previously ErrorContext was exempt as a special case. Instead of a blanket exception of the checkpointer process, only exempt the memory context used for the pending ops hash table.
2014-05-06pgindent run for 9.4Bruce Momjian
This includes removing tabs after periods in C comments, which was applied to back branches, so this change should not effect backpatching.
2014-01-07Update copyright for 2014Bruce Momjian
Update all files in head, and files COPYRIGHT and legal.sgml in all back branches.
2013-05-29pgindent run for release 9.3Bruce Momjian
This is the first run of the Perl-based pgindent script. Also update pgindent instructions.
2013-01-01Update copyrights for 2013Bruce Momjian
Fully update git head, and update back branches in ./COPYRIGHT and legal.sgml files.
2012-12-20Don't set ThisTimeLineID in checkpointer & bgwriter during recovery.Heikki Linnakangas
We used to set it to the current recovery target timeline, but the recovery target timeline can change during recovery, leaving ThisTimeLineID at an old value. That seems worse than always leaving it at zero to begin with. AFAICS there was no good reason to set it in the first place. ThisTimeLineID is not needed in checkpointer or bgwriter process, until it's time to write the end-of-recovery checkpoint, and at that point ThisTimeLineID is updated anyway.
2012-12-13Make xlog_internal.h includable in frontend context.Heikki Linnakangas
This makes unnecessary the ugly hack used to #include postgres.h in pg_basebackup. Based on Alvaro Herrera's patch
2012-10-17Close un-owned SMgrRelations at transaction end.Tom Lane
If an SMgrRelation is not "owned" by a relcache entry, don't allow it to live past transaction end. This design allows the same SMgrRelation to be used for blind writes of multiple blocks during a transaction, but ensures that we don't hold onto such an SMgrRelation indefinitely. Because an SMgrRelation typically corresponds to open file descriptors at the fd.c level, leaving it open when there's no corresponding relcache entry can mean that we prevent the kernel from reclaiming deleted disk space. (While CacheInvalidateSmgr messages usually fix that, there are cases where they're not issued, such as DROP DATABASE. We might want to add some more sinval messaging for that, but I'd be inclined to keep this type of logic anyway, since allowing VFDs to accumulate indefinitely for blind-written relations doesn't seem like a good idea.) This code replaces a previous attempt towards the same goal that proved to be unreliable. Back-patch to 9.1 where the previous patch was added.
2012-08-28Split resowner.hAlvaro Herrera
This lets files that are mere users of ResourceOwner not automatically include the headers for stuff that is managed by the resowner mechanism.
2012-07-18Fix statistics breakage from bgwriter/checkpointer process split.Tom Lane
ForwardFsyncRequest() supposed that it could only be called in regular backends, which used to be true; but since the splitup of bgwriter and checkpointer, it is also called in the bgwriter. We do not want to count such calls in pg_stat_bgwriter.buffers_backend statistics, so fix things so that they aren't. (It's worth noting here that this implies an alarmingly large increase in the expected amount of cross-process fsync request traffic, which may well mean that the process splitup was not such a hot idea.)
2012-07-18Fix management of pendingOpsTable in auxiliary processes.Tom Lane
mdinit() was misusing IsBootstrapProcessingMode() to decide whether to create an fsync pending-operations table in the current process. This led to creating a table not only in the startup and checkpointer processes as intended, but also in the bgwriter process, not to mention other auxiliary processes such as walwriter and walreceiver. Creation of the table in the bgwriter is fatal, because it absorbs fsync requests that should have gone to the checkpointer; instead they just sit in bgwriter local memory and are never acted on. So writes performed by the bgwriter were not being fsync'd which could result in data loss after an OS crash. I think there is no live bug with respect to walwriter and walreceiver because those never perform any writes of shared buffers; but the potential is there for future breakage in those processes too. To fix, make AuxiliaryProcessMain() export the current process's AuxProcType as a global variable, and then make mdinit() test directly for the types of aux process that should have a pendingOpsTable. Having done that, we might as well also get rid of the random bool flags such as am_walreceiver that some of the aux processes had grown. (Note that we could not have fixed the bug by examining those variables in mdinit(), because it's called from BaseInit() which is run by AuxiliaryProcessMain() before entering any of the process-type-specific code.) Back-patch to 9.2, where the problem was introduced by the split-up of bgwriter and checkpointer processes. The bogus pendingOpsTable exists in walwriter and walreceiver processes in earlier branches, but absent any evidence that it causes actual problems there, I'll leave the older branches alone.
2012-07-17Improve coding around the fsync request queue.Tom Lane
In all branches back to 8.3, this patch fixes a questionable assumption in CompactCheckpointerRequestQueue/CompactBgwriterRequestQueue that there are no uninitialized pad bytes in the request queue structs. This would only cause trouble if (a) there were such pad bytes, which could happen in 8.4 and up if the compiler makes enum ForkNumber narrower than 32 bits, but otherwise would require not-currently-planned changes in the widths of other typedefs; and (b) the kernel has not uniformly initialized the contents of shared memory to zeroes. Still, it seems a tad risky, and we can easily remove any risk by pre-zeroing the request array for ourselves. In addition to that, we need to establish a coding rule that struct RelFileNode can't contain any padding bytes, since such structs are copied into the request array verbatim. (There are other places that are assuming this anyway, it turns out.) In 9.1 and up, the risk was a bit larger because we were also effectively assuming that struct RelFileNodeBackend contained no pad bytes, and with fields of different types in there, that would be much easier to break. However, there is no good reason to ever transmit fsync or delete requests for temp files to the bgwriter/checkpointer, so we can revert the request structs to plain RelFileNode, getting rid of the padding risk and saving some marginal number of bytes and cycles in fsync queue manipulation while we are at it. The savings might be more than marginal during deletion of a temp relation, because the old code transmitted an entirely useless but nonetheless expensive-to-process ForgetRelationFsync request to the background process, and also had the background process perform the file deletion even though that can safely be done immediately. In addition, make some cleanup of nearby comments and small improvements to the code in CompactCheckpointerRequestQueue/CompactBgwriterRequestQueue.
2012-06-24Replace XLogRecPtr struct with a 64-bit integer.Heikki Linnakangas
This simplifies code that needs to do arithmetic on XLogRecPtrs. To avoid changing on-disk format of data pages, the LSN on data pages is still stored in the old format. That should keep pg_upgrade happy. However, we have XLogRecPtrs embedded in the control file, and in the structs that are sent over the replication protocol, so this changes breaks compatibility of pg_basebackup and server. I didn't do anything about this in this patch, per discussion on -hackers, the right thing to do would to be to change the replication protocol to be architecture-independent, so that you could use a newer version of pg_receivexlog, for example, against an older server version.
2012-06-24Don't waste the last segment of each 4GB logical log file.Heikki Linnakangas
The comments claimed that wasting the last segment made it easier to do calculations with XLogRecPtrs, because you don't have problems representing last-byte-position-plus-1 that way. In my experience, however, it only made things more complicated, because the there was two ways to represent the boundary at the beginning of a logical log file: logid = n+1 and xrecoff = 0, or as xlogid = n and xrecoff = 4GB - XLOG_SEG_SIZE. Some functions were picky about which representation was used. Also, use a 64-bit segment number instead of the log/seg combination, to point to a certain WAL segment. We assume that all platforms have a working 64-bit integer type nowadays. This is an incompatible change in WAL format, so bumping WAL version number.
2012-06-10Run pgindent on 9.2 source tree in preparation for first 9.3Bruce Momjian
commit-fest.
2012-06-01After any checkpoint, close all smgr files handles in bgwriterSimon Riggs
2012-06-01Provide interim statistics while in mid-checkpoint.Simon Riggs
Re-implements similar functionality in 9.1 and previously which was removed during split of checkpointer and bgwriter. Requested/spotted by Magnus Hagander
2012-05-10Make WaitLatch's WL_POSTMASTER_DEATH result trustworthy; simplify callers.Tom Lane
Per a suggestion from Peter Geoghegan, make WaitLatch responsible for verifying that the WL_POSTMASTER_DEATH bit it returns is truthful (by testing PostmasterIsAlive). Then simplify its callers, who no longer need to do that for themselves. Remove weasel wording about falsely-set result bits from WaitLatch's API contract.
2012-05-10Improve tests for postmaster death in auxiliary processes.Tom Lane
In checkpointer and walwriter, avoid calling PostmasterIsAlive unless WaitLatch has reported WL_POSTMASTER_DEATH. This saves a kernel call per iteration of the process's outer loop, which is not all that much, but a cycle shaved is a cycle earned. I had already removed the unconditional PostmasterIsAlive calls in bgwriter and pgstat in previous patches, but forgot that WL_POSTMASTER_DEATH is supposed to be treated as untrustworthy (per comment in unix_latch.c); so adjust those two cases to match. There are a few other places where the same idea might be applied, but only after substantial code rearrangement, so I didn't bother.
2012-05-10Further tweaking of nomenclature in checkpointer.c.Tom Lane
Get rid of some more naming choices that only make sense if you know that this code used to be in the bgwriter, as well as some stray comments referencing the bgwriter.
2012-05-09Rename BgWriterShmem/Request to CheckpointerShmem/RequestSimon Riggs
2012-05-09Rename BgWriterCommLock to CheckpointerCommLockSimon Riggs
2012-05-08Reduce idle power consumption of walwriter and checkpointer processes.Tom Lane
This patch modifies the walwriter process so that, when it has not found anything useful to do for many consecutive wakeup cycles, it extends its sleep time to reduce the server's idle power consumption. It reverts to normal as soon as it's done any successful flushes. It's still true that during any async commit, backends check for completed, unflushed pages of WAL and signal the walwriter if there are any; so that in practice the walwriter can get awakened and returned to normal operation sooner than the sleep time might suggest. Also, improve the checkpointer so that it uses a latch and a computed delay time to not wake up at all except when it has something to do, replacing a previous hardcoded 0.5 sec wakeup cycle. This also is primarily useful for reducing the server's power consumption when idle. In passing, get rid of the dedicated latch for signaling the walwriter in favor of using its procLatch, since that comports better with possible generic signal handlers using that latch. Also, fix a pre-existing bug with failure to save/restore errno in walwriter's signal handlers. Peter Geoghegan, somewhat simplified by Tom
2012-04-23Lots of doc corrections.Robert Haas
Josh Kupershmidt
2012-01-30Minor bug fix and cleanup from self-review of sync rep queues patch.Simon Riggs
2012-01-30Various minor comments changes from bgwriter to checkpointer.Simon Riggs
2012-01-25Allow pg_basebackup from standby node with safety checking.Simon Riggs
Base backup follows recommended procedure, plus goes to great lengths to ensure that partial page writes are avoided. Jun Ishizuka and Fujii Masao, with minor modifications
2012-01-01Update copyright notices for year 2012.Bruce Momjian
2011-11-01Have checkpointer send stats once each processing loop.Simon Riggs
Noted by Fujii Masao
2011-11-01Add new file for checkpointer.cSimon Riggs