pgsql: Make timeout.c more robust against missed timer interrupts. - Mailing list pgsql-committers

From Tom Lane
Subject pgsql: Make timeout.c more robust against missed timer interrupts.
Date
Msg-id E1nICgV-0006Al-G5@gemulon.postgresql.org
Whole thread Raw
List pgsql-committers
Make timeout.c more robust against missed timer interrupts.

Commit 09cf1d522 taught schedule_alarm() to not do anything if
the next requested event is after when we expect the next interrupt
to fire.  However, if somehow an interrupt gets lost, we'll continue
to not do anything indefinitely, even after the "next interrupt" time
is obviously in the past.  Thus, one missed interrupt can break
timeout scheduling for the life of the session.  Michael Harris
reported a scenario where a bug in a user-defined function caused this
to happen, so you don't even need to assume kernel bugs exist to think
this is worth fixing.  We can make things more robust at little cost
by detecting the case where signal_due_at is before "now" and forcing
a new setitimer call to occur.  This isn't a completely bulletproof
fix of course; but in our typical usage pattern where we frequently set
timeouts and clear them before they are reached, the interrupt will
get re-enabled after at most one timeout interval, which with a little
luck will be before we really need it.

While here, let's mark signal_due_at as volatile, since the signal
handler can both examine and set it.  I'm not sure there's any
actual risk given that signal_pending is already volatile, but
it's surely questionable.

Backpatch to v14 where this logic came in.

Michael Harris and Tom Lane

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CADofcAWbMrvgwSMqO4iG_iD3E2v8ZUrC-_crB41my=VMM02-CA@mail.gmail.com

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d37776e451e3481d7364137a0b159102bb05992a

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/utils/misc/timeout.c | 19 ++++++++++++++++---
1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)


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