On 01/02/2014 02:24 PM, Rushabh Lathia wrote:
Hi All,

Test case:

drop table if exists t;
create table t(c text);
insert into t values ('x'), (repeat(md5('abcdefghijklmnop'), 10000));
select pg_column_size(c), pg_column_size(c || '') FROM t;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION copy_toast_out() RETURNS VOID AS $$
declare
         v text;
BEGIN
         SELECT c INTO v FROM t WHERE c <> 'x';
     Select 1/0;
Exception
         When Others Then
         PERFORM pg_sleep(30); -- go run "TRUNCATE t" in a 2nd session


         raise notice 'length :%', length(v || ''); -- force detoast


END;
$$ language plpgsql;

postgres=# select copy_toast_out();
ERROR:  missing chunk number 0 for toast value 16390 in pg_toast_16384
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function copy_toast_out() line 10 at RAISE

Analysis:

The basic problem here is that if the lock is released on table before
extracting toasted value, and in meantime someone truncates the table,
this error can occur.  Here error coming with PL block contains an Exception
block (as incase there is an exception block, it calls
RollbackAndReleaseCurrentSubTransaction).

This is another variant of the bug discussed here: http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/0c41674c-fa02-4768-9e1b-548e56887...@quarantainenet.nl.

Do you think we should detoast the local variable before
  RollbackAndReleaseCurrentSubTransaction ? Or any other options ?

Hmm, that would fix this particular test case, but not the other case where you DROP or TRUNCATE the table in the same transaction.

The simplest fix would be to just detoast everything on assignment but that was rejected on performance grounds in that previous thread. I don't see any other realistic way to fix this, however, so maybe we should just bite the bullet and do it anyway. For simple variables like, in your test case, it's a good bet to detoast the value immediately; it'll be detoasted as soon as you try to do anything with it anyway. But it's not a good bet for record or row variables, because you often fetch the whole row into a variable but only access a field or two. Then again, if you run into that, at least you can work around it by changing your plpgsql code to only fetch the fields you need.

- Heikki


--
Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers

Reply via email to