pgsql: Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away

From: tgl(at)postgresql(dot)org (Tom Lane)
To: pgsql-committers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away
Date: 2007-09-16 02:38:14
Message-ID: 20070916023814.9CB49753E8A@cvs.postgresql.org
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Log Message:
-----------
Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away
no-longer-needed pages at the end of a table. We thought we could throw away
pages containing HEAPTUPLE_DEAD tuples; but this is not so, because such
tuples very likely have index entries pointing at them, and we wouldn't have
removed the index entries. The problem only emerges in a somewhat unlikely
race condition: the dead tuples have to have been inserted by a transaction
that later aborted, and this has to have happened between VACUUM's initial
scan of the page and then rechecking it for empty in count_nondeletable_pages.
But that timespan will include an index-cleaning pass, so it's not all that
hard to hit. This seems to explain a couple of previously unsolved bug
reports.

Tags:
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REL8_0_STABLE

Modified Files:
--------------
pgsql/src/backend/commands:
vacuumlazy.c (r1.50.4.4 -> r1.50.4.5)
(http://developer.postgresql.org/cvsweb.cgi/pgsql/src/backend/commands/vacuumlazy.c?r1=1.50.4.4&r2=1.50.4.5)

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