pgsql: pg_rewind: Fetch small files according to new size. - Mailing list pgsql-committers

From Daniel Gustafsson
Subject pgsql: pg_rewind: Fetch small files according to new size.
Date
Msg-id E1nbioy-000R0E-Pr@gemulon.postgresql.org
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: pgsql: pg_rewind: Fetch small files according to new size.  (Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>)
List pgsql-committers
pg_rewind: Fetch small files according to new size.

There's a race condition if a file changes in the source system
after we have collected the file list. If the file becomes larger,
we only fetched up to its original size. That can easily result in
a truncated file.  That's not a problem for relation files, files
in pg_xact, etc. because any actions on them will be replayed from
the WAL.  However, configuration files are affected.

This commit mitigates the race condition by fetching small files in
whole, even if they have grown.  A test is added in which an extra
file copied is concurrently grown with the output of pg_rewind thus
guaranteeing it to have changed in size during the operation.  This
is not a full fix: we still believe the original file size for files
larger than 1 MB.  That should be enough for configuration files,
and doing more than that would require big changes to the chunking
logic in libpq_source.c.

This mitigates the race condition if the file is modified between
the original scan of files and copying the file, but there's still
a race condition if a file is changed while it's being copied.
That's a much smaller window, though, and pg_basebackup has the
same issue.

This race can be seen with pg_auto_failover, which frequently uses
ALTER SYSTEM, which updates postgresql.auto.conf.  Often, pg_rewind
will fail, because the postgresql.auto.conf file changed concurrently
and a partial version of it was copied to the target.  The partial
file would fail to parse, preventing the server from starting up.

Author: Heikki Linnakangas
Reviewed-by: Cary Huang
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/f67feb24-5833-88cb-1020-19a4a2b83ac7%40iki.fi

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/16915126746e2d8597a92197a346fea0756f8e3e

Modified Files
--------------
src/bin/pg_rewind/libpq_source.c         | 32 ++++++++++++++
src/bin/pg_rewind/local_source.c         | 76 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
src/bin/pg_rewind/pg_rewind.c            |  5 +--
src/bin/pg_rewind/rewind_source.h        | 13 ++++++
src/bin/pg_rewind/t/009_growing_files.pl | 76 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5 files changed, 188 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)


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