Thread: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix race between GetNewTransactionId andGetOldestActiveTransact

Fix race between GetNewTransactionId and GetOldestActiveTransactionId.

The race condition goes like this:

1. GetNewTransactionId advances nextXid e.g. from 100 to 101
2. GetOldestActiveTransactionId reads the new nextXid, 101
3. GetOldestActiveTransactionId loops through the proc array. There are no
   active XIDs there, so it returns 101 as the oldest active XID.
4. GetNewTransactionid stores XID 100 to MyPgXact->xid

So, GetOldestActiveTransactionId returned XID 101, even though 100 only
just started and is surely still running.

This would be hard to hit in practice, and even harder to spot any ill
effect if it happens. GetOldestActiveTransactionId is only used when
creating a checkpoint in a master server, and the race condition can only
happen on an online checkpoint, as there are no backends running during a
shutdown checkpoint. The oldestActiveXid value of an online checkpoint is
only used when starting up a hot standby server, to determine the starting
point where pg_subtrans is initialized from. For the race condition to
happen, there must be no other XIDs in the proc array that would hold back
the oldest-active XID value, which means that the missed XID must be a top
transaction's XID. However, pg_subtrans is not used for top XIDs, so I
believe an off-by-one error is in fact inconsequential. Nevertheless, let's
fix it, as it's clearly wrong and the fix is simple.

This has been wrong ever since hot standby was introduced, so backport to
all supported versions.

Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/e7258662-82b6-7a45-56d4-99b337a32bf7@iki.fi

Branch
------
REL9_6_STABLE

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/cb02cbc9d7dbf061e9a4862584481513253a0db5

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/storage/ipc/procarray.c | 16 ++++++++--------
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)