Re: Inconsistent increment of pg_stat_database.xact_rollback with logical replication
Nikolay Samokhvalov <nik@postgres.ai>
From: Nikolay Samokhvalov <nik@postgres.ai>
To: Rafael Thofehrn Castro <rafaelthca@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-04-17T03:58:58Z
Lists: pgsql-bugs, pgsql-hackers
Attachments
- v1-xact-rollback-decoding.patch (application/octet-stream) patch v1
On Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 7:19 PM Rafael Thofehrn Castro <rafaelthca@gmail.com> wrote: > Column xact_rollback from pg_stat_database gets inconsistently incremented when logical replication is being used (on publisher side). ... > This is causing inconsistency in monitoring TPS metric of a database where we eventually see sudden spikes of TPS in the order of millions. This still reproduces on master. I agree on the root cause: ReorderBufferProcessTXN() ends each decoded transaction with AbortCurrentTransaction() for catalog cleanup; in the walsender that is a top-level abort, so AtEOXact_PgStat_Database(isCommit=false) increments the backend-local pgStatXactRollback. The counts are flushed to shared stats on walsender exit, producing an acute spike. Result: for production systems with tight alerting on xact_rollback, this turns routine logical-replication operations (disabling a subscription, dropping a slot, walsender restart) into false-positive pages. Also experienced at GitLab [1][2][3]. Attaching a simple patch that adds a backend-local flag pgStatXactSkipCounters in pgstat_database.c that AtEOXact_PgStat_Database() honors to skip the counter bump. Included a TAP test that fails on master with 5/0 and passes with the patch. If there is agreement on this shape, happy to send patches for all supported branches. Let me know what you think. [1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/production/-/work_items/8290 [2] https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/postgresql-consulting/tests-and-benchmarks/-/work_items/39 [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/orbit/knowledge-graph/-/work_items/406 Nik