Thomas Munro <thomas.mu...@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> This type of violent shutdown seems to be associated with occasional
> corruption of .gcda files (the files output by GCC coverage builds).
> The symptoms are that if you use --enable-coverage and make
> check-world you'll very occasionally get a spurious TAP test failure
> like this:
> # Failed test 'pg_ctl start: no stderr'
> # at
> /home/travis/build/postgresql-cfbot/postgresql/src/bin/pg_ctl/../../../src/test/perl/TestLib.pm
> line 301.
> # got:
> 'profiling:/home/travis/build/postgresql-cfbot/postgresql/src/backend/nodes/copyfuncs.gcda:Merge
> mismatch for function 94
> # '
> # expected: ''
> I'm not sure of the exact mechanism though. GCC supplies a function
> __gcov_flush() that normally runs at exit or execve, so if you're
> killed without reaching those you don't get any .gcda data. Perhaps
> we are in exit (or fork/exec) partway through writing out coverage
> data in __gcov_flush(), and at that moment we are killed. Then a
> subsequent run of instrumented code will find the half-written file
> and print the "Merge mismatch" message.
On a slow/loaded machine, perhaps it could be that the postmaster loses
patience and SIGKILLs a backend that's still writing its .gcda data?
If so, maybe we could make SIGKILL_CHILDREN_AFTER_SECS longer in
coverage builds? Or bite the bullet and make it configurable ...
regards, tom lane
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