Re: Issue with the PRNG used by Postgres

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 5:30 PM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
>> By far the most of the stuck spinlocks I've seen were due to bugs in
>> out-of-core extensions. Absurdly enough, the next common thing probably is due
>> to people using gdb to make an uninterruptible process break out of some code,
>> without a crash-restart, accidentally doing so while a spinlock is held.

> Hmm, interesting. I'm glad I haven't seen those extensions. But I
> think I have seen cases of people attaching gdb to grab a backtrace to
> debug some problem in production, and failing to detach it within 60
> seconds.

I don't doubt that there are extensions with bugs of this ilk
(and I wouldn't bet an appendage that there aren't such bugs
in core, either). But Robert's question remains: how does
PANIC'ing after awhile make anything better? I flat out don't
believe the idea that having a backend stuck on a spinlock
would otherwise go undetected.

regards, tom lane