Re: Unexpected VACUUM FULL failure

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "Simon Riggs" <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
Cc: "Alvaro Herrera" <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>, pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Unexpected VACUUM FULL failure
Date: 2007-08-10 01:42:43
Message-ID: 7670.1186710163@sss.pgh.pa.us
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"Simon Riggs" <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> Good hunch. I plugged this hole earlier, but on further inspection I can
> see the plug wasn't wide enough. XLogAsyncCommitFlush() is good enough,
> but HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum() still allowed the inexact bookkeeping to
> sometimes skip hint bit setting, when executed with concurrent
> transactions touching other tables.

> ISTM that if we call HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum() with an additional
> boolean parameter, force, we can tell VF to always set the hint bits in
> every case, not just HEAP_MOVED_IN and HEAP_MOVED_OUT.

Surely this approach is no good: won't it allow hint bits to reach disk
in advance of their transaction?

I think it'd be safer, and a lot less ugly, to recast the tests in
VACUUM FULL. If we make the first pass clear any old MOVED_IN/MOVED_OUT
bits then the last pass can key off those instead of assuming that
XMIN_COMMITTED is set everywhere. Then we'd not need
XLogAsyncCommitFlush, which is a kluge anyway.

regards, tom lane

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