pgsql: Replace durable_rename_excl() by durable_rename(), take two - Mailing list pgsql-committers

Replace durable_rename_excl() by durable_rename(), take two

durable_rename_excl() attempts to avoid overwriting any existing files
by using link() and unlink(), and it falls back to rename() on some
platforms (aka WIN32), which offers no such overwrite protection.  Most
callers use durable_rename_excl() just in case there is an existing
file, but in practice there shouldn't be one (see below for more
details).

Furthermore, failures during durable_rename_excl() can result in
multiple hard links to the same file.  As per Nathan's tests, it is
possible to end up with two links to the same file in pg_wal after a
crash just before unlink() during WAL recycling.  Specifically, the test
produced links to the same file for the current WAL file and the next
one because the half-recycled WAL file was re-recycled upon restarting,
leading to WAL corruption.

This change replaces all the calls of durable_rename_excl() to
durable_rename().  This removes the protection against accidentally
overwriting an existing file, but some platforms are already living
without it and ordinarily there shouldn't be one.  The function itself
is left around in case any extensions are using it.  It will be removed
on HEAD via a follow-up commit.

Here is a summary of the existing callers of durable_rename_excl() (see
second discussion link at the bottom), replaced by this commit.  First,
basic_archive used it to avoid overwriting an archive concurrently
created by another server, but as mentioned above, it will still
overwrite files on some platforms.  Second, xlog.c uses it to recycle
past WAL segments, where an overwrite should not happen (origin of the
change at f0e37a8) because there are protections about the WAL segment
to select when recycling an entry.  The third and last area is related
to the write of timeline history files.  writeTimeLineHistory() will
write a new timeline history file at the end of recovery on promotion,
so there should be no such files for the same timeline.
What remains is writeTimeLineHistoryFile(), that can be used in parallel
by a WAL receiver and the startup process, and some digging of the
buildfarm shows that EEXIST from a WAL receiver can happen with an error
of "could not link file \"pg_wal/xlogtemp.NN\" to \"pg_wal/MM.history\",
which would cause an automatic restart of the WAL receiver as it is
promoted to FATAL, hence this should improve the stability of the WAL
receiver as rename() would overwrite an existing TLI history file
already fetched by the startup process at recovery.

This is the second time this change is attempted, ccfbd92 being the
first one, but this time no assertions are added for the case of a TLI
history file written concurrently by the WAL receiver or the startup
process because we can expect one to exist (some of the TAP tests are
able to trigger with a proper timing).

This commit has been originally applied on v16~ as of dac1ff30906b, and
we have received more reports of this issue, where clusters can become
corrupted at replay in older stable branches with multiple links
pointing to the same physical WAL segment file.  This backpatch
addresses the problem for the v13~v15 range.

Author: Nathan Bossart
Reviewed-by: Robert Haas, Kyotaro Horiguchi, Michael Paquier
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220407182954.GA1231544@nathanxps13
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/Ym6GZbqQdlalSKSG@paquier.xyz
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAJhEC04tBkYPF4q2uS_rCytauvNEVqdBAzasBEokfceFhF=KDQ@mail.gmail.com

Branch
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REL_13_STABLE

Details
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https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/26a79cbbdaceddf9d7d839e498e834851181b566

Modified Files
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src/backend/access/transam/timeline.c | 18 +++++-------------
src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c     |  9 +++------
2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)