pgsql: Avoid spurious deadlocks when upgrading a tuple lock

From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org>
To: pgsql-committers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Avoid spurious deadlocks when upgrading a tuple lock
Date: 2019-06-18 22:24:38
Message-ID: E1hdMWs-0004id-QY@gemulon.postgresql.org
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Avoid spurious deadlocks when upgrading a tuple lock

This puts back reverted commit de87a084c0a5, with some bug fixes.

When two (or more) transactions are waiting for transaction T1 to release a
tuple-level lock, and transaction T1 upgrades its lock to a higher level, a
spurious deadlock can be reported among the waiting transactions when T1
finishes. The simplest example case seems to be:

T1: select id from job where name = 'a' for key share;
Y: select id from job where name = 'a' for update; -- starts waiting for T1
Z: select id from job where name = 'a' for key share;
T1: update job set name = 'b' where id = 1;
Z: update job set name = 'c' where id = 1; -- starts waiting for T1
T1: rollback;

At this point, transaction Y is rolled back on account of a deadlock: Y
holds the heavyweight tuple lock and is waiting for the Xmax to be released,
while Z holds part of the multixact and tries to acquire the heavyweight
lock (per protocol) and goes to sleep; once T1 releases its part of the
multixact, Z is awakened only to be put back to sleep on the heavyweight
lock that Y is holding while sleeping. Kaboom.

This can be avoided by having Z skip the heavyweight lock acquisition. As
far as I can see, the biggest downside is that if there are multiple Z
transactions, the order in which they resume after T1 finishes is not
guaranteed.

Backpatch to 9.6. The patch applies cleanly on 9.5, but the new tests don't
work there (because isolationtester is not smart enough), so I'm not going
to risk it.

Author: Oleksii Kliukin
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/B9C9D7CD-EB94-4635-91B6-E558ACEC0EC3@hintbits.com
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/2815.1560521451@sss.pgh.pa.us

Branch
------
REL_10_STABLE

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0772d8a00eb88b50ac81f379955d30660cecdeeb

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/access/heap/README.tuplock | 10 ++
src/backend/access/heap/heapam.c | 83 ++++++---
.../expected/tuplelock-upgrade-no-deadlock.out | 195 +++++++++++++++++++++
src/test/isolation/isolation_schedule | 1 +
.../specs/tuplelock-upgrade-no-deadlock.spec | 72 ++++++++
5 files changed, 340 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-)

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