Re: Odd pg dump error: cache lookup failure

On 2020-Oct-21, Tom Lane wrote:

> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> writes:
> > Here's a quick patchset that makes pg_dump do LOCK TABLE on all
> > relations it dumps; patch 0001 allows server-side LOCK TABLE to run on
> > any relkind, and then 0002 makes pg_dump test for that capability at
> > connection start, and if it exists, then it's used for all relations to
> > dump.
>
> I think the "test for that capability" bit needs more subtlety.

Great ideas, thanks -- all adopted in the attached version. I didn't
test this with 9.5 but as you say NOWAIT is already supported there and
the command itself does work.

Since the wrong-object error was thrown before the lock-unavailable
error, and both before the ACL check, it works to test for those codes
specifically; it's not a problem if the lock is unavailable or denied.
Right now if any other error occurs in the LOCK TABLE, pg_dump aborts
with an error. I don't know what that could be. I suppose if it dies
with OOM then it doesn't matter whether it's here or elsewhere.

Testing for a view as I was doing was not good, because PG12 does allow
locks on views. I decided to use pg_aggregate_fnoid_index because it's
easier for manual tests: it doesn't prevent connecting to the database
when a strong lock is held. This in contrast with other more obvious
candidates. It's a pretty arbitrary choice but it shouldn't harm
anything since we don't actually hold the lock for more than an instant,
and that only if it's not contended.

I discovered once again that fallthrough comment handling in combination
with ccache are pretty obnoxious.