Re: WaitForOlderSnapshots in DETACH PARTITION causes deadlocks
On 2023-Jul-25, Michael Paquier wrote: > On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 07:40:04PM +, Imseih (AWS), Sami wrote: > > WaitForOlderSnapshots is used here to ensure that snapshots older than > > the start of the ALTER TABLE DETACH CONCURRENTLY are completely removed > > to guarantee consistency, however it does seem to cause deadlocks for at > > least RR/SERIALIZABLE transactions. > > > > There are cases [2] in which certain operations are accepted as not being > > MVCC-safe, and now I am wondering if this is another case? Deadlocks are > > not a good scenario, and WaitForOlderSnapshot does not appear to do > > anything for READ COMMITTED transactions. > > > > So do we actually need WaitForOlderSnapshot in the FINALIZE code? and > > Could be acceptable that this operation is marked as not MVCC-safe like > > the other aforementioned operations? > > I guess that there is an argument with lifting that a bit. Based on > the test case your are providing, a deadlock occuring between the > FINALIZE and a scan of the top-level partitioned table in a > transaction that began before the DETACH CONCURRENTLY does not seem > like the best answer to have from the user perspective. I got to > wonder whether there is room to make the wait for older snapshots in > the finalize phase more robust, though, and actually make it wait > until the first transaction commits rather than fail because of a > deadlock like that. It took a lot of work to get SERIALIZABLE/RR transactions to work with DETACHED CONCURRENTLY, so I'm certainly not in a hurry to give up and just "document that it doesn't work". I don't think that would be an acceptable feature regression. I spent some time yesterday trying to turn the reproducer into an isolationtester spec file. I have not succeeded yet, but I'll continue with that this afternoon. -- Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "Every machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough." https://twitter.com/libseybieda/status/1541673325781196801
Re: WaitForOlderSnapshots in DETACH PARTITION causes deadlocks
On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 07:40:04PM +, Imseih (AWS), Sami wrote: > WaitForOlderSnapshots is used here to ensure that snapshots older than > the start of the ALTER TABLE DETACH CONCURRENTLY are completely removed > to guarantee consistency, however it does seem to cause deadlocks for at > least RR/SERIALIZABLE transactions. > > There are cases [2] in which certain operations are accepted as not being > MVCC-safe, and now I am wondering if this is another case? Deadlocks are > not a good scenario, and WaitForOlderSnapshot does not appear to do > anything for READ COMMITTED transactions. > > So do we actually need WaitForOlderSnapshot in the FINALIZE code? and > Could be acceptable that this operation is marked as not MVCC-safe like > the other aforementioned operations? I guess that there is an argument with lifting that a bit. Based on the test case your are providing, a deadlock occuring between the FINALIZE and a scan of the top-level partitioned table in a transaction that began before the DETACH CONCURRENTLY does not seem like the best answer to have from the user perspective. I got to wonder whether there is room to make the wait for older snapshots in the finalize phase more robust, though, and actually make it wait until the first transaction commits rather than fail because of a deadlock like that. > Perhaps I am missing some important point here, so any feedback will be > appreciated. Adding Alvaro in CC as the author of 71f4c8c6 for input, FYI. -- Michael signature.asc Description: PGP signature
WaitForOlderSnapshots in DETACH PARTITION causes deadlocks
Hi, While recently looking into partition maintenance, I found a case in which DETACH PARTITION FINALIZE could case deadlocks. This occurs when a ALTER TABLE DETACH CONCURRENTLY, followed by a cancel, the followed by an ALTER TABLE DETACH FINALIZE, and this sequence of steps occur in the middle of other REPEATABLE READ/SERIALIZABLE transactions. These RR/SERIALIZABLE should not accessed the partition until the FINALIZE step starts. See the attached repro. This seems to occur as the FINALIZE is calling WaitForOlderSnapshot [1] to make sure that all older snapshots are completed before the finalize is completed and the detached partition is removed from the parent table association. WaitForOlderSnapshots is used here to ensure that snapshots older than the start of the ALTER TABLE DETACH CONCURRENTLY are completely removed to guarantee consistency, however it does seem to cause deadlocks for at least RR/SERIALIZABLE transactions. There are cases [2] in which certain operations are accepted as not being MVCC-safe, and now I am wondering if this is another case? Deadlocks are not a good scenario, and WaitForOlderSnapshot does not appear to do anything for READ COMMITTED transactions. So do we actually need WaitForOlderSnapshot in the FINALIZE code? and Could be acceptable that this operation is marked as not MVCC-safe like the other aforementioned operations? Perhaps I am missing some important point here, so any feedback will be appreciated. Regards, Sami Imseih Amazon Web Services (AWS) [1] https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/commands/tablecmds.c#L18757-L18764 [2] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/mvcc-caveats.html partition_detach_finalize_deadlock_repro.sql Description: partition_detach_finalize_deadlock_repro.sql
