Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix freezing of a dead HOT-updated tuple

On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 11:14 PM, Alvaro Herrera
<alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> wrote:
> I was seeing just the reindex problem. I don't see any more dups.
>
> But I've tried to reproduce it afresh now, and let it run for a long
> time and nothing happened. Maybe I made a mistake last week and
> ran an unfixed version. I don't see any more problems now.

Okay, so that's one person more going to this trend, making three with
Peter and I.

>> If you are getting the dup rows consider the code in the block in
>> heapam.c that starts with the comment “replace multi by update xid”.
>>
>> When I repro this I find that MultiXactIdGetUpdateXid() returns 0.
>> There is an updater in the multixact array however the status is
>> MultiXactStatusForNoKeyUpdate and not MultiXactStatusNoKeyUpdate. I
>> assume this is a preliminary status before the following row in the
>> hot chain has it’s multixact set to NoKeyUpdate.
>
> Yes, the "For" version is the locker version rather than the actual
> update. That lock is acquired by EvalPlanQual locking the row just
> before doing the update. I think GetUpdateXid has no reason to return
> such an Xid, since it's not an update.
>
>> Since a 0 is returned this does precede cutoff_xid and
>> TransactionIdDidCommit(0) will return false. This ends up aborting
>> the multixact on the row even though the real xid is committed. This
>> sets XMAX to 0 and that row becomes visible as one of the dups.
>> Interestingly the real xid of the updater is 122944 and the cutoff_xid
>> is 122945.
>
> I haven't seen this effect. Please keep us updated if you're able to
> verify corruption this way.

Me neither. It would be nice to not live long with such a sword of Damocles.
--
Michael