Horton

Re: SIGQUIT handling, redux

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2020-09-09T20:30:37Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> On 2020-09-09 16:09:00 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> We could call it startup_packet_die or something?

> Yea, I think that'd be good.

I'll make it so.

>> We see backends going through this code on a very regular basis in the
>> buildfarm, but complete hangs are rare as can be.  I think you
>> overestimate the severity of the problem.

> I don't think the BF exercises the problmetic paths to a significant
> degree. It's mostly local socket connections, and where not it's
> localhost. There's no slow DNS, no more complicated authentication
> methods, no packet loss. How often do we ever actually end up even
> getting close to any of the paths but immediate shutdowns?

Since we're talking about quickdie(), immediate shutdown/crash restart
is exactly the case of concern, and the buildfarm exercises it all the
time.

> And in the
> SIGQUIT path, how often do we end up in the SIGKILL path, masking
> potential deadlocks?

True, we can't really tell that.  I wonder if we should make the
postmaster emit a log message when it times out and goes to SIGKILL.
After a few months we could scrape the buildfarm logs and get a
pretty good handle on it.

			regards, tom lane

Commits

  1. Log a message when resorting to SIGKILL during shutdown/crash recovery.

  2. Don't run atexit callbacks during signal exits from ProcessStartupPacket.

  3. Use _exit(2) for SIGQUIT during ProcessStartupPacket, too.

  4. Make archiver's SIGQUIT handler exit via _exit().