Port Bug Report: I receive 'Deadlock detected' errors when running a row-locking query.

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POSTGRESQL BUG REPORT TEMPLATE
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Your name : Mark Wright
Your email address : mwright(at)pro-ns(dot)net

Category : runtime: back-end
Severity : non-critical

Summary: I receive 'Deadlock detected' errors when running a row-locking query.

System Configuration
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Operating System : Linux 2.0.34 ELF, Debian Distribution

PostgreSQL version : 6.5

Compiler used : gcc 2.7.2.3

Hardware:
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Pentium (686), 32meg

Versions of other tools:
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make 3.77
flex 2.5.4

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Problem Description:
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When I have more than 2 clients performing the same query, which involves record
locking, I receive the following errors:

NOTICE: Deadlock detected -- See the lock(l) manual page for a possible cause.
ERROR: WaitOnLock: error on wakeup - Aborting this transaction

The point of the query is to grab the next available record in such a way that
multiple clients will not grab the same record. The query is contained inside a
PL/pgSQL function. Source for the function is below.

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Test Case:
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The following SQL script will create the tables, indices and function necessary
to reproduce the error. If you then execute these commands, it should re-create
the problem:
perl -e 'for ($i=0;$i<200;++$i){system \
"psql -c \"select get_next_test_attendee();\" >> $$.txt";}'&
perl -e 'for ($i=0;$i<200;++$i){system \
"psql -c \"select get_next_test_attendee();\" >> $$.txt";}'&
perl -e 'for ($i=0;$i<200;++$i){system \
"psql -c \"select get_next_test_attendee();\" >> $$.txt";}'&

(The same error occurs if I use DBI+DBD::Pg in a Perl script instead of psql.)

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Begin Script
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drop table test_attendees;
drop sequence test_attendees_id_number_seq;
create table test_attendees
(
id_number serial,
print_status char default 'R',
name varchar(20)
);
create index idx_test_attendees_name on test_attendees(name);

DROP FUNCTION get_next_test_attendee ();
CREATE FUNCTION get_next_test_attendee() returns int4 AS '
DECLARE
test_attendee_rec RECORD;
BEGIN
FOR test_attendee_rec IN SELECT * FROM test_attendees
WHERE print_status = ''R''
ORDER BY id_number FOR UPDATE OF test_attendees
LOOP
-- If more changes in test_attendee are to be made than just setting
-- status to P, do them all in one UPDATE. The record is
-- locked now and the lock will release only when our entire
-- transaction commits or rolls back - not when we update it.
UPDATE test_attendees SET print_status = ''Y''
WHERE id_number = test_attendee_rec.id_number;

-- Now we return from inside the loop at the first
-- row processed. This ensures we will process one
-- row at max per call.
RETURN test_attendee_rec.id_number;
END LOOP;

-- If we reach here, we did not find any row (left) with
-- print_status = R
return -1;

END;' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

insert into test_attendees (name) values ('name1');
insert into test_attendees (name) values ('name2');
...

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End Script
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Solution:
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