Thread: pgsql: Fail hard on out-of-memory failures in xlogreader.c

pgsql: Fail hard on out-of-memory failures in xlogreader.c

From
Michael Paquier
Date:
Fail hard on out-of-memory failures in xlogreader.c

This commit changes the WAL reader routines so as a FATAL for the
backend or exit(FAILURE) for the frontend is triggered if an allocation
for a WAL record decode fails in walreader.c, rather than treating this
case as bogus data, which would be equivalent to the end of WAL.  The
key is to avoid palloc_extended(MCXT_ALLOC_NO_OOM) in walreader.c,
relying on plain palloc() calls.

The previous behavior could make WAL replay finish too early than it
should.  For example, crash recovery finishing earlier may corrupt
clusters because not all the WAL available locally was replayed to
ensure a consistent state.  Out-of-memory failures would show up
randomly depending on the memory pressure on the host, but one simple
case would be to generate a large record, then replay this record after
downsizing a host, as Ethan Mertz originally reported.

This relies on bae868caf222, as the WAL reader routines now do the
memory allocation required for a record only once its header has been
fully read and validated, making xl_tot_len trustable.  Making the WAL
reader react differently on out-of-memory or bogus record data would
require ABI changes, so this is the safest choice for stable branches.
Also, it is worth noting that 3f1ce973467a has been using a plain
palloc() in this code for some time now.

Thanks to Noah Misch and Thomas Munro for the discussion.

Like the other commit, backpatch down to 12, leaving out v11 that will
be EOL'd soon.  The behavior of considering a failed allocation as bogus
data comes originally from 0ffe11abd3a0, where the record length
retrieved from its header was not entirely trustable.

Reported-by: Ethan Mertz
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/ZRKKdI5-RRlta3aF@paquier.xyz
Backpatch-through: 12

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/6b18b3fe2c2f375d4a5d8a69b67bc59d13d4c844

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/access/transam/xlogreader.c | 47 ++++++---------------------------
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 39 deletions(-)