Re: Possible race in UnlockBuffers() and UnpinBuffer()

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq(at)cs(dot)toronto(dot)edu>
Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Possible race in UnlockBuffers() and UnpinBuffer()
Date: 2006-04-15 04:21:55
Message-ID: 12922.1145074915@sss.pgh.pa.us
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"Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq(at)cs(dot)toronto(dot)edu> writes:
> "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote
>> "Qingqing Zhou" <zhouqq(at)cs(dot)toronto(dot)edu> writes:
>>> After this, the proc->sem will be bumped to 1 unexpectedly ... Since
>>> this problem is rare, a possible fix is to put a critical section
>>> around line 1 to 7 and remove UnlockBuffers() accordingly.
>>
>> No, that would make any attempt to control-C a VACUUM have a significant
>> probability for panicking the whole database.

> Why panicking by control-C?

Because the entire point of a critical section is that any error (eg
"Query cancelled") is turned into a panic. So a query-cancel attempt
while a vacuum is blocked here would either do nothing (bad) or panic
the database (worse).

regards, tom lane

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