Re: REINDEX INDEX results in a crash for an index of pg_class since9.6 - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Andres Freund
Subject Re: REINDEX INDEX results in a crash for an index of pg_class since9.6
Date
Msg-id 20190502021913.axyvyyyw5547swy5@alap3.anarazel.de
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: REINDEX INDEX results in a crash for an index of pg_class since 9.6  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: REINDEX INDEX results in a crash for an index of pg_class since 9.6
List pgsql-hackers
Hi,

On 2019-05-01 22:01:53 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> > Well, as I said before, I think hiding the to-be-rebuilt index from the
> > list of indexes is dangerous too - if somebody added an actual
> > CatalogUpdate/Insert (rather than inplace_update) anywhere along the
> > index_build() path, we'd not get an assertion failure anymore, but just
> > an index without the new entry. And given the fragility with HOT hiding
> > that a lot of the time, that seems dangerous to me.
> 
> I think that argument is pretty pointless considering that "REINDEX TABLE
> pg_class" does it this way, and that code is nearly old enough to
> vote.

IMO the reindex_relation() case isn't comparable. By my read the main
purpose there is to prevent inserting into not-yet-rebuilt indexes. The
relevant comment says:
     * ....  If we are processing pg_class itself, we want to make sure
     * that the updates do not try to insert index entries into indexes we
     * have not processed yet.  (When we are trying to recover from corrupted
     * indexes, that could easily cause a crash.)

Note the *not processed yet* bit.  That's *not* comparable logic to
hiding the index that *already* has been rebuilt, in the middle of
reindex_index().  Yes, the way reindex_relation() is currently coded,
the RelationSetIndexList() *also* hides the already rebuilt index, but
that's hard for reindex_relation() to avoid, because it's outside of
reindex_index().


> +     * If we are doing one index for reindex_relation, then we will find that
> +     * the index is already not present in the index list.  In that case we
> +     * don't have to do anything to the index list here, which we mark by
> +     * clearing is_pg_class.
>       */

> -    RelationSetNewRelfilenode(iRel, persistence);
> +    is_pg_class = (RelationGetRelid(heapRelation) == RelationRelationId);
> +    if (is_pg_class)
> +    {
> +        allIndexIds = RelationGetIndexList(heapRelation);
> +        if (list_member_oid(allIndexIds, indexId))
> +        {
> +            otherIndexIds = list_delete_oid(list_copy(allIndexIds), indexId);
> +            /* Ensure rd_indexattr is valid; see comments for RelationSetIndexList */
> +            (void) RelationGetIndexAttrBitmap(heapRelation, INDEX_ATTR_BITMAP_ALL);
> +        }
> +        else
> +            is_pg_class = false;
> +    }

That's not pretty either :(

Greetings,

Andres Freund



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