pgsql: Avoid integer overflow while testing wal_skip_threshold conditio

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-committers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Avoid integer overflow while testing wal_skip_threshold conditio
Date: 2025-01-30 20:36:54
Message-ID: E1tdbHS-004UFB-ME@gemulon.postgresql.org
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Avoid integer overflow while testing wal_skip_threshold condition.

smgrDoPendingSyncs had two distinct risks of integer overflow while
deciding which way to ensure durability of a newly-created relation.
First, it accumulated the total size of all forks in a variable of
type BlockNumber (uint32). While we restrict an individual fork's
size to fit in that, I don't believe there's such a restriction on
all of them added together. Second, it proceeded to multiply the
sum by BLCKSZ, which most certainly could overflow a uint32.

(The exact expression is total_blocks * BLCKSZ / 1024. The
compiler might choose to optimize that to total_blocks * 8,
which is not at quite as much risk of overflow as a literal
reading would be, but it's still wrong.)

If an overflow did occur it could lead to a poor choice to
shove a very large relation into WAL instead of fsync'ing it.
This wouldn't be fatal, but it could be inefficient.

Change total_blocks to uint64 which should be plenty, and
rearrange the comparison calculation to be overflow-safe.

I noticed this while looking for ramifications of the proposed
change in MAX_KILOBYTES. It's not entirely clear to me why
wal_skip_threshold is limited to MAX_KILOBYTES in the
first place, but in any case this code is unsafe regardless
of the range of wal_skip_threshold.

Oversight in c6b92041d which introduced wal_skip_threshold,
so back-patch to v13.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/1a01f0-66ec2d80-3b-68487680@27595217
Backpatch-through: 13

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/b9aa4166fa3823d4f1f76286ca21fcfa991ce036

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/catalog/storage.c | 4 ++--
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

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