Re: Unlisten / listen in a transaction failure - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Unlisten / listen in a transaction failure
Date
Msg-id 19305.1360772219@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Unlisten / listen in a transaction failure  (Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@endpoint.com>)
List pgsql-bugs
Greg Sabino Mullane <greg@endpoint.com> writes:
> I came across some unusual behavior with listen. Basically, if you
> unlisten and listen inside of a transaction, new notices are not
> picked up right away - but they will show up if you send yourself
> a notice. It also works as expected if you unlisten, commit, and
> then re-listen. Tested on 9.1 and 9.2. Demo psql script:

Huh.  If you run this in an assert-enabled build, it gets an assert
failure:

regression=# listen abc;
LISTEN
regression=# notify abc;
NOTIFY
Asynchronous notification "abc" received from server process with PID 19048.
regression=# begin; unlisten *; listen abc; commit;
BEGIN
UNLISTEN
LISTEN
COMMIT
regression=# notify abc;
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Failed.

The Assert is

TRAP: FailedAssertion("!(MyProcPid == (asyncQueueControl->backend[MyBackendId].pid))", File: "async.c", Line: 1821)

which shows that we aren't actually registered in the global array of
listeners, even though we think we should be.

I think the problem is that we do Exec_ListenPreCommit, then
Exec_UnlistenAllCommit, then Exec_ListenCommit --- and the second
of these undoes our registration as a listener.  That needs rethinking.
Looking at it, the backendHasExecutedInitialListen flag seems pretty
badly thought out too.  It looks to me like we'd be better off with a
flag defined like "amRegisteredListener" that tracks whether we're
currently in the array or not, and during AtCommit_Notify() we shouldn't
deregister as a listener until we've scanned all the pending actions and
know whether we are ending in a no-listens state or not.

            regards, tom lane

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