Thread: pgsql: Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away

pgsql: Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away

From

tgl@postgresql.org (Tom Lane)

Date:

16 September 2007, 02:38:09

Log Message:
-----------
Fix aboriginal mistake in lazy VACUUM's code for truncating away
no-longer-needed pages at the end of a table.  We thought we could throw away
pages containing HEAPTUPLE_DEAD tuples; but this is not so, because such
tuples very likely have index entries pointing at them, and we wouldn't have
removed the index entries.  The problem only emerges in a somewhat unlikely
race condition: the dead tuples have to have been inserted by a transaction
that later aborted, and this has to have happened between VACUUM's initial
scan of the page and then rechecking it for empty in count_nondeletable_pages.
But that timespan will include an index-cleaning pass, so it's not all that
hard to hit.  This seems to explain a couple of previously unsolved bug
reports.

Tags:
----
REL8_1_STABLE

Modified Files:
--------------
    pgsql/src/backend/commands:
        vacuumlazy.c (r1.61.2.4 -> r1.61.2.5)
        (http://developer.postgresql.org/cvsweb.cgi/pgsql/src/backend/commands/vacuumlazy.c?r1=1.61.2.4&r2=1.61.2.5)