LockHasWaiters() crashes on fast-path locks

From: SATYANARAYANA NARLAPURAM <satyanarlapuram(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: LockHasWaiters() crashes on fast-path locks
Date: 2026-03-25 21:15:08
Message-ID: CAHg+QDe_=ZahnRx37bzrqYenKn_S5YDQ00fTfwe-ZUmjqO=qLg@mail.gmail.com
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Hi Hackers,

LockHasWaiters() assumes that the LOCALLOCK's lock and proclock pointers
are populated, but this is not the case for locks acquired via the
fast-path optimization. Weak locks (< ShareUpdateExclusiveLock) on
relations may not be stored in the shared lock hash table, and the
LOCALLOCK entry is left with lock = NULL and proclock = NULL in such a case.

If LockHasWaiters() is called for such a lock, it dereferences those NULL
pointers when it reads proclock->holdMask and lock->waitMask, causing a
segfault.

The only existing caller is lazy_truncate_heap() in VACUUM, which queries
LockHasWaitersRelation(rel, AccessExclusiveLock). Since AccessExclusiveLock
is the strongest lock level, it is never fast-pathed, so the bug has never
been triggered in practice. However, any new caller that passes a weak lock
mode, for example, checking whether a DDL is waiting on an AccessShareLock
will crash. The fix is to transfer the lock to the main lock table before
we access them.

Attached a patch to address this issue.

Thanks,
Satya

Attachment Content-Type Size
0001-lock-has-waiters-fast-path-fix.patch application/octet-stream 829 bytes

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