We've identified a bug in the DSA (Dynamic Shared Memory Area) allocator that causes memory corruption and crashes during parallel hash joins with large data sets. The bug has been present since the DSA implementation was introduced and affects all supported branches.
Attached is a minimal fix (5 lines added, 0 changed).
== Bug Summary ==
In make_new_segment() (src/backend/utils/mmgr/dsa.c), there are two paths for computing segment layout:
Path 1 (geometric): knows total_size upfront, computes
total_pages = total_size / FPM_PAGE_SIZE
pagemap entries = total_pages <-- correct
Path 2 (odd-sized, when requested > geometric): works forward from
usable_pages = requested_pages
pagemap entries = usable_pages <-- BUG
The pagemap is indexed by absolute page number. The FreePageManager hands out pages with indices from metadata_pages to (metadata_pages + usable_pages - 1). Since metadata_pages >= 1, page indices at the high end of the range exceed usable_pages, making the pagemap accesses out-of-bounds.
== How It Was Found on Postgres 15 ==
Multiple parallel worker backends crashed simultaneously with SIGSEGV in dsa_get_address(), called from dsa_free() in ExecHashTableDetachBatch() during parallel hash join batch cleanup.
Stack trace:
#0 dsa_get_address (area, dp) at dsa.c:955
#1 dsa_free (area, dp) at dsa.c:839
#2 ExecHashTableDetachBatch (hashtable) at nodeHash.c:3189
#3 ExecParallelHashJoinNewBatch (hjstate) at nodeHashjoin.c:1157
All crashing workers computed the same pageno (196993), which was the last valid FPM page but beyond the pagemap array (usable_pages = 196609).
== Root Cause (from core dump analysis) ==
The crashing segment had:
usable_pages = 196,609 (pagemap has this many entries)
metadata_pages = 385
total_pages = 196,994 (= metadata_pages + usable_pages)
last FPM page = 196,993 (= metadata_pages + usable_pages - 1)
pagemap valid indices: 0 .. 196,608
FPM page indices: 385 .. 196,993
Pages 196,609 through 196,993 (385 pages) have no valid pagemap entry.
The pagemap array ends 3,072 bytes before the data area starts (padding zone). Most out-of-bounds entries fall in this padding and cause silent corruption. The last 17 entries fall in the data area itself, causing bidirectional corruption: pagemap writes destroy allocated object data, and subsequent pagemap reads return garbage, crashing dsa_free().
== The Fix ==
After computing metadata_bytes with usable_pages pagemap entries, add entries for the metadata pages themselves:
metadata_bytes +=
((metadata_bytes / (FPM_PAGE_SIZE - sizeof(dsa_pointer))) + 1) *
sizeof(dsa_pointer);
The divisor (FPM_PAGE_SIZE - sizeof(dsa_pointer)) = 4088 accounts for the circular dependency: each metadata page costs one pagemap entry (8 bytes), so only 4088 of each 4096-byte metadata page is net-free for other pagemap entries. The +1 absorbs the ceiling.
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Hopefully I've followed the correct format for creating a patch -- this is my first post here.
Thanks,
Paul
