Re: Removing more vacuumlazy.c special cases, relfrozenxid optimizations

Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>

From: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-03-31T02:37:58Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 7:00 PM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> Something vaguely like EXPECT_EQ_U32 in regress.c. Maybe
> AssertCmp(type, a, op, b),
>
> Then the assertion could have been something like
>    AssertCmp(int32, diff, >, 0)

I'd definitely use them if they were there.

> Does the line number in the failed run actually correspond to the xid, rather
> than the mxid case? I didn't check.

Yes, I verified -- definitely relfrozenxid.

> You can do something similar locally on linux with
>     make -Otarget -C contrib/ -j48 -s USE_MODULE_DB=1 installcheck prove_installcheck=true
> (the prove_installcheck=true to prevent tap tests from running, we don't seem
> to have another way for that)
>
> I don't think windows uses USE_MODULE_DB=1, but it allows to cause a lot more
> load concurrently than running tests serially...

Can't get it to fail locally with that recipe.

> >     Assert(vacrel->NewRelfrozenXid == OldestXmin ||
> >            TransactionIdPrecedesOrEquals(vacrel->relfrozenxid,
> >                                          vacrel->NewRelfrozenXid));
>
> The comment in your patch says "is either older or newer than FreezeLimit" - I
> assume that's some rephrasing damage?

Both the comment and the assertion are correct. I see what you mean, though.

> Perhaps it's worth commiting improved assertions on master? If this is indeed
> a pre-existing bug, and we're just missing due to slightly less stringent
> asserts, we could rectify that separately.

I don't think there's much chance of the assertion actually hitting
without the rest of the patch series. The new relfrozenxid value is
always going to be OldestXmin - vacuum_min_freeze_age on HEAD, while
with the patch it's sometimes close to OldestXmin. Especially when you
have lots of dead tuples that you churn through constantly (like
pgbench_tellers, or like these system catalogs on the CI test
machine).

> Hm. This triggers some vague memories. There's some oddities around shared
> relations being vacuumed separately in all the databases and thus having
> separate horizons.

That's what I was thinking of, obviously.

> After "remembering" that, I looked in the cirrus log for the failed run, and
> the worker was processing shared a shared relation last:
>
> 2022-03-30 03:48:30.238 GMT [5984][autovacuum worker] LOG:  automatic analyze of table "contrib_regression.pg_catalog.pg_authid"

I noticed the same thing myself. Should have said sooner.

> Perhaps this ought to be an elog() instead of an Assert()? Something has gone
> pear shaped if we get here... It's a bit annoying though, because it'd have to
> be a PANIC to be visible on the bf / CI :(.

Yeah, a WARNING would be good here. I can write a new version of my
patch series with a separation patch for that this evening. Actually,
better make it a PANIC for now...

-- 
Peter Geoghegan



Commits

  1. Have VACUUM warn on relfrozenxid "in the future".

  2. vacuumlazy.c: Further consolidate resource allocation.

  3. Generalize how VACUUM skips all-frozen pages.

  4. Set relfrozenxid to oldest extant XID seen by VACUUM.

  5. Doc: Add relfrozenxid Tip to XID wraparound section.

  6. vacuumlazy.c: document vistest and OldestXmin.

  7. Increase hash_mem_multiplier default to 2.0.

  8. Consolidate VACUUM xid cutoff logic.

  9. Add VACUUM instrumentation for scanned pages, relfrozenxid.

  10. Simplify lazy_scan_heap's handling of scanned pages.

  11. Try to stabilize reloptions test, again.

  12. Unify VACUUM VERBOSE and autovacuum logging.

  13. Fix possible HOT corruption when RECENTLY_DEAD changes to DEAD while pruning.

  14. pg_resetxlog: add option to set oldest xid & use by pg_upgrade

  15. Teach VACUUM to bypass unnecessary index vacuuming.

  16. Centralize horizon determination for temp tables, fixing bug due to skew.

  17. pg_surgery: Try to stabilize regression tests.

  18. Add "split after new tuple" nbtree optimization.

  19. Fix bugs in vacuum of shared rels, by keeping their relcache entries current.

  20. Avoid useless truncation attempts during VACUUM.

  21. Only skip pages marked as clean in the visibility map, if the last 32

  22. Fix recently-understood problems with handling of XID freezing, particularly