Horton

Re: shared-memory based stats collector - v70

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

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From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Greg Stark <stark@mit.edu>
Cc: "Drouvot, Bertrand" <bdrouvot@amazon.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>, Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>, Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-08-09T16:47:48Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Hi,

On 2022-08-09 12:00:46 -0400, Greg Stark wrote:
> I was more aiming at a C function that extensions could use directly
> rather than an SQL function -- though I suppose having the former it
> would be simple enough to implement the latter using it. (though it
> would have to be one for each stat type I guess)

I think such a C extension could exist today, without patching core code? It'd
be a bit ugly to include pgstat_internal.h, I guess, but other than that...


> The reason I want a C function is I'm trying to get as far as I can
> without a connection to a database, without a transaction, without
> accessing the catalog, and as much as possible without taking locks.

I assume you don't include lwlocks under locks?


> I think this is important for making monitoring highly reliable and low
> impact on production.

I'm doubtful about that, but whatever.


> The main problem with my current code is that I'm accessing the shared
> memory hash table directly. This means the I'm possibly introducing
> locking contention on the shared memory hash table.

I don't think that's a large enough issue to worry about unless you're
polling at a very high rate, which'd be a bad idea in itself. If a backend
can't get the lock for some stats change it'll defer flushing the stats a bit,
so it'll not cause a lot of other problems.


> I'm thinking of separating the shared memory hash scan from the metric scan
> so the list can be quickly built minimizing the time the lock is held.

I'd really really want to see some evidence that any sort of complexity here
is worth it.


> I have a few things I would like to suggest for future improvements to
> this infrastructure. I haven't polished the details of it yet but the
> main thing I think I'm missing is the catalog name for the object. I
> don't want to have to fetch it from the catalog and in any case I
> think it would generally be useful and might regularize the
> replication slot handling too.

I'm *dead* set against including catalog names in shared memory stats. That'll
add a good amount of memory usage and complexity, without any sort of
comensurate gain.


> I also think it would be nice to have a change counter for every stat
> object, or perhaps a change time. Prometheus wouldn't be able to make
> use of it but other monitoring software might be able to receive only
> metrics that have changed since the last update which would really
> help on databases with large numbers of mostly static objects.

I think you're proposing adding overhead that doesn't even have a real user.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

Commits

  1. Improve comment about dropped entries in pgstat.c

  2. Fix temporary memory leak in system table index scans

  3. pgstat: set timestamps of fixed-numbered stats after a crash.

  4. pgstat: Update docs to match the shared memory stats reality.

  5. pgstat: Hide instability in stats.spec with -DCATCACHE_FORCE_RELEASE.

  6. pgstat: add/extend tests for resetting various kinds of stats.

  7. Add minimal tests for recovery conflict handling.

  8. pgstat: test stats interactions with physical replication.

  9. pgstat: add tests for handling of restarts, including crashes.

  10. pgstat: add tests for transaction behaviour, 2PC, function stats.

  11. pgstat: add pg_stat_have_stats() test helper.

  12. pgstat: add pg_stat_force_next_flush(), use it to simplify tests.

  13. pgstat: move pgstat.c to utils/activity.

  14. pgstat: store statistics in shared memory.

  15. pgstat: remove stats_temp_directory.

  16. pgstat: rename STATS_COLLECTOR GUC group to STATS_CUMULATIVE.

  17. pgstat: revise replication slot API in preparation for shared memory stats.

  18. pgstat: scaffolding for transactional stats creation / drop.

  19. pgstat: introduce PgStat_Kind enum.

  20. pgstat: prepare APIs used by pgstatfuncs for shared memory stats.

  21. pgstat: add pgstat_copy_relation_stats().

  22. pgstat: rename some pgstat_send_* functions to pgstat_report_*.

  23. pgstat: stats collector references in comments.

  24. pgstat: move transactional code into pgstat_xact.c.

  25. dsm: allow use in single user mode.

  26. dshash: revise sequential scan support.

  27. pgstat: remove some superflous comments from pgstat.h.

  28. pgstat: reorder pgstat.[ch] contents.

  29. pgstat: split different types of stats into separate files.

  30. pgstat: introduce pgstat_relation_should_count().

  31. pgstat: separate "xact level" handling out of relation specific functions.

  32. pgstat: rename pgstat_initstats() to pgstat_relation_init().

  33. pgstat: split out WAL handling from pgstat_{initialize,report_stat}.

  34. pgstat: run pgindent on pgstat.c/h.

  35. pgstat: split relation, database handling out of pgstat_report_stat().

  36. Move code around in StartupXLOG().

  37. pgstat: Prepare to use mechanism for truncated rels also for droppped rels.

  38. pgstat: Split out relation stats handling from AtEO[Sub]Xact_PgStat() etc.

  39. pgstat: Schedule per-backend pgstat shutdown via before_shmem_exit().

  40. Schedule ShutdownXLOG() in single user mode using before_shmem_exit().

  41. Make parallel worker shutdown complete entirely via before_shmem_exit().

  42. pgstat: Bring up pgstat in BaseInit() to fix uninitialized use of pgstat by AV.

  43. pgstat: split reporting/fetching of bgwriter and checkpointer stats.

  44. Split backend status and progress related functionality out of pgstat.c.

  45. Split wait event related code from pgstat.[ch] into wait_event.[ch].

  46. Make archiver process an auxiliary process.

  47. Force to send remaining WAL stats to the stats collector at walwriter exit.

  48. Add pg_stat_database counters for sessions and session time

  49. Collect statistics about SLRU caches

  50. Don't run atexit callbacks in quickdie signal handlers.

  51. Create a "fast path" for acquiring weak relation locks.