Re: LockAcquireExtended() dontWait vs weaker lock levels than already held

2022-03-22 Thread Robert Haas
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 3:01 PM Andres Freund  wrote:
> We clearly already know how to compute whether a lock is "included" in
> something we already hold - after all ProcSleep() successfully does so.
>
> Isn't it a pretty trivial test? Seems like it'd boil down to something like

I don't mind you fixing the behavior. I just couldn't pass up an
opportunity to complain about the structure of lock.c.

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com




Re: LockAcquireExtended() dontWait vs weaker lock levels than already held

2022-03-22 Thread Andres Freund
Hi,

On 2022-03-22 14:20:55 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 1:43 PM Andres Freund  wrote:
> > When LockAcquireExtended(dontWait=false) acquires a lock where we already 
> > hold
> > stronger lock and somebody else is also waiting for that lock, it goes 
> > through
> > a fairly circuitous path to acquire the lock:
> >
> > A conflicting lock is detected: if (lockMethodTable->conflictTab[lockmode] 
> > & lock->waitMask)
> > LockAcquireExtended() -> WaitOnLock() -> ProcSleep()
> > ProcSleep() follows this special path:
> >  * Special case: if I find I should go in front of some waiter, 
> > check to
> >  * see if I conflict with already-held locks or the requests before 
> > that
> >  * waiter.  If not, then just grant myself the requested lock 
> > immediately.
> > and grants the lock.
>
> I think this happens because lock.c is trying to imagine a world in
> which we don't know anything a priori about which locks are stronger
> or weaker than others and everything is deduced from the conflict
> matrix. I think at some point in time someone believed that we might
> use different conflict matrixes for different lock types. With an
> arbitrary conflict matrix, "stronger" and "weaker" aren't even
> necessarily well-defined ideas: A could conflict with B, B with C, and
> C with A, or something crazy like that. It seems rather unlikely to me
> that we'd ever do such a thing at this point. In fact, there are a lot
> of things in lock.c that we'd probably do differently if we were doing
> that work over.

We clearly already know how to compute whether a lock is "included" in
something we already hold - after all ProcSleep() successfully does so.

Isn't it a pretty trivial test? Seems like it'd boil down to something like

acquireMask = lockMethodTable->conflictTab[lockmode];
if ((MyProc->heldLocks & acquireMask) == acquireMask)
/* already hold lock conflicting with it, grant the new lock to myself) */
else
/* current behaviour */

LockCheckConflicts() mostly knows how to deal with this. It's just that we don't
even use LockCheckConflicts() if a lock acquisition conflicts with waitMask:

/*
 * If lock requested conflicts with locks requested by waiters, must join
 * wait queue.  Otherwise, check for conflict with already-held locks.
 * (That's last because most complex check.)
 */
if (lockMethodTable->conflictTab[lockmode] & lock->waitMask)
found_conflict = true;
else
found_conflict = LockCheckConflicts(lockMethodTable, lockmode,
lock, proclock);

Yes, there's more deadlocks that can be solved by queue reordering, but the
simple cases that ProcSleep() handles don't seem problematic to solve in
lock.c directly either...

Greetings,

Andres Freund




Re: LockAcquireExtended() dontWait vs weaker lock levels than already held

2022-03-22 Thread Robert Haas
On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 1:43 PM Andres Freund  wrote:
> When LockAcquireExtended(dontWait=false) acquires a lock where we already hold
> stronger lock and somebody else is also waiting for that lock, it goes through
> a fairly circuitous path to acquire the lock:
>
> A conflicting lock is detected: if (lockMethodTable->conflictTab[lockmode] & 
> lock->waitMask)
> LockAcquireExtended() -> WaitOnLock() -> ProcSleep()
> ProcSleep() follows this special path:
>  * Special case: if I find I should go in front of some waiter, check 
> to
>  * see if I conflict with already-held locks or the requests before 
> that
>  * waiter.  If not, then just grant myself the requested lock 
> immediately.
> and grants the lock.

I think this happens because lock.c is trying to imagine a world in
which we don't know anything a priori about which locks are stronger
or weaker than others and everything is deduced from the conflict
matrix. I think at some point in time someone believed that we might
use different conflict matrixes for different lock types. With an
arbitrary conflict matrix, "stronger" and "weaker" aren't even
necessarily well-defined ideas: A could conflict with B, B with C, and
C with A, or something crazy like that. It seems rather unlikely to me
that we'd ever do such a thing at this point. In fact, there are a lot
of things in lock.c that we'd probably do differently if we were doing
that work over.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com