On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:> > I think if we go with the pg_check_visibility approach, we should also > copy the other consistency checks from vacuumlazy.c, given they can't > easily be triggered.
Are you referring to checks that are done in lazy_scan_heap() for each block? I think the meaning full checks in this context could be (a) page is marked as visible, but corresponding vm is not marked. (b) page is marked as all visible and has dead tuples. (c) vm bit indicates frozen, but page contains non-frozen tuples.
I think right now the design of pg_visibility is such that it returns the required information at page level to user by means of various functions like pg_visibility, pg_visibility_map, etc. If we want to add page level checks in this new routine as well, then we have to think what should be the output if such checks fails, shall we issue warning, shall we return information in some other way. Also, I think there will be some duplicity with the already provided information via other functions of this module.
> > Wonder how we can report both block and tuple > level issues. Kinda inclined to report everything as a block level > issue? >
The way currently this module provides information, it seems better to have separate API's for block and tuple level inconsistency. For block level, I think most of the information can be retrieved by existing API's and for tuple level, this new API can be used.
