Re: Possible race in UnlockBuffers() and UnpinBuffer() - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Possible race in UnlockBuffers() and UnpinBuffer()
Date
Msg-id 12922.1145074915@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Possible race in UnlockBuffers() and UnpinBuffer()  ("Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq@cs.toronto.edu>)
List pgsql-hackers
"Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq@cs.toronto.edu> writes:
> "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote
>> "Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq@cs.toronto.edu> writes:
>>> After this, the proc->sem will be bumped to 1 unexpectedly ... Since
>>> this problem is rare, a possible fix is to put a critical section
>>> around line 1 to 7 and remove UnlockBuffers() accordingly.
>> 
>> No, that would make any attempt to control-C a VACUUM have a significant
>> probability for panicking the whole database.

> Why panicking by control-C?

Because the entire point of a critical section is that any error (eg
"Query cancelled") is turned into a panic.  So a query-cancel attempt
while a vacuum is blocked here would either do nothing (bad) or panic
the database (worse).
        regards, tom lane


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