Re: About that re-release ...

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>> What about http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20150527222142.GE5885@postgresql.org
>>> ?
>>
>>> I believe that is also a 9.4.2 regression, and a serious one.
>>
>> Oh? There was nothing in the thread that suggested to me that it was
>> a new-in-9.4.2 bug.
>
> I think it is.

The executive summary here is that 9.4.2 and 9.3.7 fail to start if
pg_control's oldestMultiXid points to a pg_multixact/offsets file that
does not exist. Earlier versions tolerated that, but the new versions
don't. So people who have this situation will be unable to start the
database after upgrading. That's quite bad.

However, the new set of releases is not entirely responsible for the
problem, because the situation that causes 9.4.2 and 9.3.7 to fail to
start isn't supposed to occur. The database really SHOULD NOT remove
an offsets file that does not precede oldestMultiXid, and if it does,
then either oldestMultiXid is set wrong (which would be a bug), or the
database removed an offsets file to which references may still exist
(which would be a data loss issue). Thomas Munro, Alvaro, and I have
been discussing this on Skype, but have so far been unable to
construct a series of events which would lead to an occurrence of this
kind. We speculate that pg_upgrade may play a role, but there's no
proof of that.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company