pgsql: Avoid assertion failure with LISTEN in a serializable transactio

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-committers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Avoid assertion failure with LISTEN in a serializable transactio
Date: 2019-11-24 20:58:11
Message-ID: E1iYyxP-0008UO-0I@gemulon.postgresql.org
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Avoid assertion failure with LISTEN in a serializable transaction.

If LISTEN is the only action in a serializable-mode transaction,
and the session was not previously listening, and the notify queue
is not empty, predicate.c reported an assertion failure. That
happened because we'd acquire the transaction's initial snapshot
during PreCommit_Notify, which was called *after* predicate.c
expects any such snapshot to have been established.

To fix, just swap the order of the PreCommit_Notify and
PreCommit_CheckForSerializationFailure calls during CommitTransaction.
This will imply holding the notify-insertion lock slightly longer,
but the difference could only be meaningful in serializable mode,
which is an expensive option anyway.

It appears that this is just an assertion failure, with no
consequences in non-assert builds. A snapshot used only to scan
the notify queue could not have been involved in any serialization
conflicts, so there would be nothing for
PreCommit_CheckForSerializationFailure to do except assign it a
prepareSeqNo and set the SXACT_FLAG_PREPARED flag. And given no
conflicts, neither of those omissions affect the behavior of
ReleasePredicateLocks. This admittedly once-over-lightly analysis
is backed up by the lack of field reports of trouble.

Per report from Mark Dilger. The bug is old, so back-patch to all
supported branches; but the new test case only goes back to 9.6,
for lack of adequate isolationtester infrastructure before that.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3ac7f397-4d5f-be8e-f354-440020675694@gmail.com
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/13881.1574557302@sss.pgh.pa.us

Branch
------
REL9_5_STABLE

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/864e8080e19007ed3377d679447d2fc06f148bc8

Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/access/transam/xact.c | 19 ++++++++++---------
1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

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