Re: New IndexAM API controlling index vacuum strategies

On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 7:21 AM Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 6:40 AM Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Note that I've merged multiple existing functions in vacuumlazy.c into
> > > one: the patch merges lazy_vacuum_all_indexes() and lazy_vacuum_heap()
> > > into a single function named vacuum_indexes_mark_unused()
>
> > I agree to create a function like vacuum_indexes_mark_unused() that
> > makes a decision and does index and heap vacumming accordingly. But
> > what is the point of removing both lazy_vacuum_all_indexes() and
> > lazy_vacuum_heap()? I think we can simply have
> > vacuum_indexes_mark_unused() call those functions. I'm concerned that
> > if we add additional criteria to vacuum_indexes_mark_unused() in the
> > future the function will become very large.
>
> I agree now. I became overly excited about advertising the fact that
> these two functions are logically one thing. This is important, but it
> isn't necessary to go as far as actually making everything into one
> function. Adding some comments would also make that point clear, but
> without making vacuumlazy.c even more spaghetti-like. I'll fix it.
>
> > > I wonder if we can add some kind of emergency anti-wraparound vacuum
> > > logic to what I have here, for Postgres 14.
>
> > +1
> >
> > I think we can set VACOPT_TERNARY_DISABLED to
> > tab->at_params.index_cleanup in table_recheck_autovac() or increase
> > the thresholds used to not skipping index vacuuming.
>
> I was worried about the "tupgone = true" special case causing problems
> when we decide to do some index vacuuming and some heap
> vacuuming/LP_UNUSED-marking but then later decide to end the VACUUM.
> But I now think that getting rid of "tupgone = true" gives us total
> freedom to
> choose what to do, including the freedom to start with index vacuuming
> and then give up on it later -- even after we do some amount of
> LP_UNUSED-marking (during a VACUUM with multiple index passes, perhaps
> due to a low maintenance_work_mem setting). That isn't actually
> special at all, because everything will be 100% decoupled.
>
> Whether or not it's a good idea to either not start index vacuuming or
> to end it early (e.g. due to XID wraparound pressure) is a complicated
> question, and the right approach will be debatable in each case/when
> thinking about each issue. However, deciding on the best behavior to
> address these problems should have nothing to do with implementation
> details and everything to do with the costs and benefits to users.
> Which now seems possible.
>
> A sophisticated version of the "XID wraparound pressure"
> implementation could increase reliability without ever being
> conservative, just by evaluating the situation regularly and being
> prepared to change course when necessary -- until it is truly a matter
> of shutting down new XID allocations/the server. It should be possible
> to decide to end VACUUM early and advance relfrozenxid (provided we
> have reached the point of finishing all required pruning and freezing,
> of course). Highly agile behavior seems quite possible, even if it
> takes a while to agree on a good design.

Since I was thinking that always skipping index vacuuming on
anti-wraparound autovacuum is legitimate, skipping index vacuuming
only when we're really close to the point of going into read-only mode
seems a bit conservative, but maybe a good start. I've attached a PoC
patch to disable index vacuuming if the table's relfrozenxid is too
older than autovacuum_freeze_max_age (older than 1.5x of
autovacuum_freeze_max_age).

>
> > Aside from whether it's good or bad, strictly speaking, it could
> > change the index AM API contract. The documentation of
> > amvacuumcleanup() says:
> >
> > ---
> > stats is whatever the last ambulkdelete call returned, or NULL if
> > ambulkdelete was not called because no tuples needed to be deleted.
> > ---
> >
> > With this change, we could pass NULL to amvacuumcleanup even though
> > the index might have tuples needed to be deleted.
>
> I think that we should add a "Note" box to the documentation that
> notes the difference here. Though FWIW my interpretation of the words
> "no tuples needed to be deleted" was always "no tuples needed to be
> deleted because vacuumlazy.c didn't call ambulkdelete()". After all,
> VACUUM can add to tups_vacuumed through pruning inside
> heap_prune_chain(). It is already possible (though only barely) to not
> call ambulkdelete() for indexes (to only call amvacuumcleanup() during
> cleanup) despite the fact that heap vacuuming did "delete tuples".

Agreed.

Regards,

--
Masahiko Sawada
EDB:  https://www.enterprisedb.com/