Re: max_stack_depth problem though query is substantially smaller

Charles Clavadetscher wrote:
> We have a process in R which reads statistical raw data from a table and computes time series values
> from them.
> The time series values are in a hstore field with the date as the key and the value as the value.
> The process writes the computed value into a temporary table and locks the corresponding row(s) of the
> target table for update.
> Finally the row(s) are updated if they already exist or inserted if they do not exist.
>
> This process runs nightly and processes many GB of data without generating any error. Normally these
> are low frequency time series
> (monthly or quarterly data).
>
> Now we have a daily time serie with about 46'000 key/value pairs. In near future this will increase to
> 86'000 including data from
> previous years.
>
> When R processes the daily time serie we get a stack size exceeded error, followed by the hint to
> increase the max_stack_depth. My
> colleague, who wrote the R function and performed the test read the docs and increased, according to
> ulimit -s the max_stack_depth
> to 7MB.
>
> Here the details of OS and PG:
> OS: osx 10.10.5
> PG: 9.3.3
>
> ulimit -s = 8192
>
> The resize did work as *show max_stack_depth;" has shown. After this change, however, the query states
> the same error as before,
> just with the new limit of 7 MB.
>
> The query itself was written to a file in order to verify its size. The size turned out to be 1.7MB,
> i.e. even below the
> conservative default limit of 2 MB, yet alone substantially below 7 MB.
>
> Apart from the fact that we could consider using a different strategy to store time series, we would
> like to understand what is
> causing the problem.
>
> Here the query as it looks like in the R code:
> sql_query_data <- sprintf("BEGIN;
> CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE ts_updates(ts_key varchar, ts_data hstore,
> ts_frequency integer) ON COMMIT DROP;
> INSERT INTO ts_updates(ts_key, ts_data) VALUES %s;
> LOCK TABLE %s.timeseries_main IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;
>
> UPDATE %s.timeseries_main
> SET ts_data = ts_updates.ts_data
> FROM ts_updates
> WHERE ts_updates.ts_key = %s.timeseries_main.ts_key;
>
> INSERT INTO %s.timeseries_main
> SELECT ts_updates.ts_key, ts_updates.ts_data, ts_updates.ts_frequency
> FROM ts_updates
> LEFT OUTER JOIN %s.timeseries_main ON (%s.timeseries_main.ts_key =
> ts_updates.ts_key)
> WHERE %s.timeseries_main.ts_key IS NULL;
> COMMIT;",
> values, schema, schema, schema, schema, schema, schema, schema)
>
> And here is how it looks like at the end:
>
> INSERT INTO ts_updates(ts_key, ts_data, ts_frequency) VALUES ('somekey',hstore('1900-01-01','-
> 0.395131869823009')||
> hstore('1900-01-02','-
> 0.595131869823009')||
> hstore('1900-01-03','-
> 0.395131869823009')||
> [...] 46'000 times
> hstore('1900-01-04','-
> 0.395131869823009'),NULL);

I don't understand which query causes the error.
The queries you quote above are smaller than 1.7 MB...
You could log errors to find out which statement causes the error.

One idea would be to attach a debugger to the backend, set a breakpoint in check_stack_depth()
where the error is thrown, and take a stack trace when you hit the error.
Maybe that can show you what is going on.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe