Re: [GENERAL] cache lookup of relation 165058647 failed

Sean Chittenden <sean@chittenden.org>

From: Sean Chittenden <sean@chittenden.org>
To: Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
Cc: PostgreSQL Bugs List <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org>, Juris Krumins <juriskr@komin.lv>
Date: 2004-05-04T05:19:08Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs, pgsql-general
> I'v find out that this error occurs in:
>  dependency.c file
>
> 2004-04-26 11:09:34 ERROR:  dependency.c 1621: cache lookup of relation
> 149064743 failed
> 2004-04-26 11:09:34 ERROR:  Relation "tmp_table1" does not exist
> 2004-04-26 11:09:34 ERROR:  Relation "tmp_table1" does not exist
>
> in getRelationDescription(StringInfo buffer, Oid relid) function.
>
> Any ideas what can cause this errors.

<aol>Me too.</aol>

But, I am suspecting that it's a race condition with the new background 
writer code.  I've started testing a new database design and was able 
to reproduce this on my laptop nearly 90% of the time, but could only 
reproduce it about 10% of the time on my production databases until I 
figured out what the difference was, fsync.

fsync was causing enough of a slow down that SearchSysCache() was 
finding the tuple, whereas with fsync = false, it wasn't able to find 
it.  But, in search of proving that it wasn't fsync (I use fsync = 
false on my laptop to save my pour drive), I threw in a sleep in 
between my tests, and I'm able to get things to work 100% of the time 
by adding a sleep.  The following fails to work with fsync = false, 90% 
of the time and with fsync = true, only 10% of the time.

% psql -f test-begin.sql template1 && psql -f test_enterprise_class.sql 
&& psql -f test-end1.sql template1 && psql -f test-end2.sql template1

But, if I change the command to:

% psql -f test-begin.sql template1 && psql -f test_enterprise_class.sql 
&& psql -f test-end1.sql template1 && sleep 1 && psql -f test-end2.sql 
template1

I have no problems with cache relation misses.  As for what happens in 
those commands, I'm:

-- 1) Dropping the test database and re-creating it
-- 2) In a different connection, load a rather large schema as the dba
-- 3) Connect again and create a temp table
-- 4) Connect a second time, and check to see if the temp table exists

The sleep comes at step 3.5 in the above sequence of operations.

*boom*  Here's a snippet of my terminal (the first thing I do after 
BEGINning a transaction is create a temp table if it doesn't exist):

## BEGIN ##
[snip]
[...]
COMMIT
You are now connected to database "test" as user "usr".
BEGIN
psql:test-end2.sql:3: ERROR:  cache lookup failed for relation 398033
CONTEXT:  SQL query "SELECT  TRUE FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c LEFT JOIN 
pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace WHERE c.relname = 
'tmptbl'::TEXT AND c.relkind = 'r'::TEXT AND 
pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(c.oid)"
PL/pgSQL function "create_tmptbl" line 2 at perform
PL/pgSQL function "check_or_populate_func" line 8 at assignment
PL/pgSQL function "setuid_wrapper_func" line 5 at return
## END ##

What's really bothering me is I can push the up arrow on the console, 
run the exact same thing (including dropping the database), and it'll 
work sometimes.  Very disturbing.  As I said, I'm *very* suspicious of 
the background writer goo that Jan added simply because I can't think 
of anything else that'd have this problem.

I've run each of those commands 100 times now, with and without the 
sleep 1.  With the sleep 1, it's worked 100% of the time.  Jan, any bit 
of code that comes to mind?

All of my bgwriter_* settings are set to their default.

-sc

-- 
Sean Chittenden