Re: Crash during backend start when low on memory

Hi,

On 2023-02-06 08:37:17 +0100, Mats Kindahl wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 12:18 AM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
> > >, but I cannot see how that can cause problems since it is "just"
> > > a setjmp() and longjmp(). It allocates a structure on the stack that
> > > contains the values of the registers and the signal set; it is big, but
> > not
> > > exceedingly so. If somebody could enlighten me about if there are any
> > > problems with this, I would be very grateful.
> >
> > If you aren't careful you end up with PG_exception_stack in a backend
> > still pointing to that PG_TRY. Which means that an error during backend
> > startup would jump into postmaster code. Which would not be good.
> >
>
> I did run into this case when "failing" some of the memory allocations
> inside the backend with a debugger (see the PATCH.md).
>
> There are, however, already cases in the backend startup that can raise an
> error (for example, the code that creates the MessageContext in
> PostgresMain). So, either if one of these error cases is triggered, or if
> you make a mistake and add an ereport(ERROR,...) at the wrong place during
> startup, it could cause this problem. In other words, wouldn't adding a
> PG_TRY() in the code spawning the backend *prevent* such a problem and
> hence reduce the risk of a mistake in code causing the backend jumping into
> postmaster code (of course assuming that the code is written correctly).

It's fine to add ereport(ERROR)s inside the backend startup - elog.c knows how
to deal with no error handlers being set up. We just promote the ERROR to a
FATAL. That's not at all the same as having a PG_exception_stack set up at a
point we don't want to return to.

Remember that backends are forked, so they inherit the stack that postmaster
has set up.

> > Particularly because this is a bugfix we need to make the fix more
> > minimal than the patches proposed so far.
> >
>
> I can remove the PG_TRY() and use ereport(LOG, ...) + ExitPostmaster if it
> feels like a safer path for incorporating a bug fix, but note that there is
> still a risk that the backend will tear down the postmaster. For example,
> allocating memory for a memory context can fail, or throwing another error
> inside the backend startup can also fail, so I think that there will be
> more work to do after this.

I can't really follow.

Greetings,

Andres Freund