Re: Use pg_pwritev_with_retry() instead of write() in dir_open_for_write() to avoid partial writes?

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Bharath Rupireddy <bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com>
Cc: Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-02-15T00:55:25Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

Hi,

On 2023-02-14 18:00:00 +0530, Bharath Rupireddy wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 11:09 PM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> >
> > > Later code assigns iov[0].iov_len thus we need to provide a separate
> > > iov non-const variable, or can we use pwrite instead there?  (I didn't
> > > find pg_pwrite_with_retry(), though)
> >
> > Given that we need to do that, and given that we already need to loop to
> > handle writes that are longer than PG_IOV_MAX * BLCKSZ, it's probably not
> > worth avoiding iov initialization.
> >
> > But I think it's worth limiting the initialization to blocks.
>
> We can still optimize away the for loop by using a single iovec for
> remaining size, like the attached v2 patch.
>
> > I'd also try to combine the first pg_writev_* with the second one.
>
> Done, PSA v2 patch.

This feels way too complicated to me.  How about something more like the
attached?


> 2) A small test module passing in a file with the size to write isn't
> multiple of block size, meaning, the code we have in the function to
> write last remaining bytes (less than BLCKSZ) gets covered which isn't
> covered right now -

FWIW, I tested this locally by just specifying a smaller size than BLCKSZ for
the write size.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

Commits

  1. Revise pg_pwrite_zeros()

  2. Use pg_pwrite_zeros() in walmethods.c

  3. Introduce pg_pwrite_zeros() in fileutils.c

  4. Move pg_pwritev_with_retry() to src/common/file_utils.c

  5. Restore pg_pread and friends.

  6. Remove dead pread and pwrite replacement code.