Re: Prevent crash when calling pgstat functions with unregistered stats kind

From: Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz>
To: Bertrand Drouvot <bertranddrouvot(dot)pg(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Ewan Young <kdbase(dot)hack(at)gmail(dot)com>, pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Prevent crash when calling pgstat functions with unregistered stats kind
Date: 2026-07-02 04:10:18
Message-ID: akXkqov6wLbKwpAd@paquier.xyz
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On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 04:06:01AM +0000, Bertrand Drouvot wrote:
> I agree that the responsibility should primarily be in the extension. However,
> the issue is that the NULL dereference happens inside core code (pgstat_prep_pending_entry,
> etc.), and the resulting segfault(s) cause the postmaster to terminate all
> backends (not just the offending session).
>
> Given that one misconfigured extension can crash all connections on the server,
> a defensive check in core seems reasonable (kind of similar to 341e9a05e7b).

Nope, this was a different thing, doable in a couple of steps:
- Load the library.
- Write custom stats.
- Stop the server, flush the stats.
- Edit the configuration, not loading the library.
- Restart the server, loading failed.

The problem of this thread ought to be blocked at its source, in the
extension itself: let's not give free hands to an extension to do what
it should not be allowed to do. There is a similar defense in
test_custom_rmgrs, as one example. We should just map to that.
--
Michael

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