LWLock deadlock in brinRevmapDesummarizeRange

On 2023-Feb-22, Tomas Vondra wrote:

But instead of I almost immediately ran into a LWLock deadlock :-(

Ouch.

I've managed to reproduce this on PG13+, but I believe it's there since
the brinRevmapDesummarizeRange was introduced in PG10. I just haven't
tried on pre-13 releases.

Hmm, I think that might just be an "easy" way to hit it, but the problem
is actually older than that, since AFAICS brin_doupdate is careless
regarding locking order of revmap page vs. regular page.

Sadly, the README doesn't cover locking considerations. I had that in a
file called 'minmax-proposal' in version 16 of the patch here
/messages/by-id/20140820225133.GB6343@eldon.alvh.no-ip.org
but by version 18 (when 'minmax' became BRIN) I seem to have removed
that file and replaced it with the README and apparently I didn't copy
this material over.

... and in there, I wrote that we would first write the brin tuple in
the regular page, unlock that, and then lock the revmap for the update,
without holding lock on the data page. I don't remember why we do it
differently now, but maybe the fix is just to release the regular page
lock before locking the revmap page? One very important change is that
in previous versions the revmap used a separate fork, and we had to
introduce an "evacuation protocol" when we integrated the revmap into
the main fork, which may have changed the locking considerations.

Another point: to desummarize a range, just unlinking the entry from
revmap should suffice, from the POV of other index scanners. Maybe we
can simplify the whole procedure to: lock revmap, remove entry, remember
page number, unlock revmap; lock regular page, delete entry, unlock.
Then there are no two locks held at the same time during desummarize.

This comes from v16:

+ Locking considerations
+ ----------------------
+ 
+ To read the TID during an index scan, we follow this protocol:
+ 
+ * read revmap page
+ * obtain share lock on the revmap buffer
+ * read the TID
+ * obtain share lock on buffer of main fork
+ * LockTuple the TID (using the index as relation).  A shared lock is
+   sufficient.  We need the LockTuple to prevent VACUUM from recycling
+   the index tuple; see below.
+ * release revmap buffer lock
+ * read the index tuple
+ * release the tuple lock
+ * release main fork buffer lock
+ 
+ 
+ To update the summary tuple for a page range, we use this protocol:
+ 
+ * insert a new index tuple somewhere in the main fork; note its TID
+ * read revmap page
+ * obtain exclusive lock on revmap buffer
+ * write the TID
+ * release lock
+ 
+ This ensures no concurrent reader can obtain a partially-written TID.
+ Note we don't need a tuple lock here.  Concurrent scans don't have to
+ worry about whether they got the old or new index tuple: if they get the
+ old one, the tighter values are okay from a correctness standpoint because
+ due to MVCC they can't possibly see the just-inserted heap tuples anyway.
+
+ [vacuum stuff elided]

--
Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"Escucha y olvidarás; ve y recordarás; haz y entenderás" (Confucio)

On 2/22/23 12:35, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

On 2023-Feb-22, Tomas Vondra wrote:

But instead of I almost immediately ran into a LWLock deadlock :-(

Ouch.

I've managed to reproduce this on PG13+, but I believe it's there since
the brinRevmapDesummarizeRange was introduced in PG10. I just haven't
tried on pre-13 releases.

Hmm, I think that might just be an "easy" way to hit it, but the problem
is actually older than that, since AFAICS brin_doupdate is careless
regarding locking order of revmap page vs. regular page.

That's certainly possible, although I ran a lot of BRIN stress tests and
it only started failing after I added the desummarization. Although, the
tests are "randomized" like this:

UPDATE t SET a = '...' WHERE random() < 0.05;

which is fairly sequential. Maybe reordering the CTIDs a bit would hit
additional deadlocks, I'll probably give it a try. OTOH that'd probably
be much more likely to be hit by users, and I don't recall any such reports.

Sadly, the README doesn't cover locking considerations. I had that in a
file called 'minmax-proposal' in version 16 of the patch here
/messages/by-id/20140820225133.GB6343@eldon.alvh.no-ip.org
but by version 18 (when 'minmax' became BRIN) I seem to have removed
that file and replaced it with the README and apparently I didn't copy
this material over.

Yeah :-( There's a couple more things that are missing in the README,
like what oi_regular_nulls mean.

... and in there, I wrote that we would first write the brin tuple in
the regular page, unlock that, and then lock the revmap for the update,
without holding lock on the data page. I don't remember why we do it
differently now, but maybe the fix is just to release the regular page
lock before locking the revmap page? One very important change is that
in previous versions the revmap used a separate fork, and we had to
introduce an "evacuation protocol" when we integrated the revmap into
the main fork, which may have changed the locking considerations.

What would happen if two processes built the summary concurrently? How
would they find the other tuple, so that we don't end up with two BRIN
tuples for the same range?

Another point: to desummarize a range, just unlinking the entry from
revmap should suffice, from the POV of other index scanners. Maybe we
can simplify the whole procedure to: lock revmap, remove entry, remember
page number, unlock revmap; lock regular page, delete entry, unlock.
Then there are no two locks held at the same time during desummarize.

Perhaps, as long as it doesn't confuse anything else.

This comes from v16:

I don't follow - what do you mean by v16? I don't see anything like that
anywhere in the repository.

+ Locking considerations
+ ----------------------
+ 
+ To read the TID during an index scan, we follow this protocol:
+ 
+ * read revmap page
+ * obtain share lock on the revmap buffer
+ * read the TID
+ * obtain share lock on buffer of main fork
+ * LockTuple the TID (using the index as relation).  A shared lock is
+   sufficient.  We need the LockTuple to prevent VACUUM from recycling
+   the index tuple; see below.
+ * release revmap buffer lock
+ * read the index tuple
+ * release the tuple lock
+ * release main fork buffer lock
+ 
+ 
+ To update the summary tuple for a page range, we use this protocol:
+ 
+ * insert a new index tuple somewhere in the main fork; note its TID
+ * read revmap page
+ * obtain exclusive lock on revmap buffer
+ * write the TID
+ * release lock
+ 
+ This ensures no concurrent reader can obtain a partially-written TID.
+ Note we don't need a tuple lock here.  Concurrent scans don't have to
+ worry about whether they got the old or new index tuple: if they get the
+ old one, the tighter values are okay from a correctness standpoint because
+ due to MVCC they can't possibly see the just-inserted heap tuples anyway.
+
+ [vacuum stuff elided]

regards

--
Tomas Vondra
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On 2023-Feb-22, Tomas Vondra wrote:

... and in there, I wrote that we would first write the brin tuple in
the regular page, unlock that, and then lock the revmap for the update,
without holding lock on the data page. I don't remember why we do it
differently now, but maybe the fix is just to release the regular page
lock before locking the revmap page? One very important change is that
in previous versions the revmap used a separate fork, and we had to
introduce an "evacuation protocol" when we integrated the revmap into
the main fork, which may have changed the locking considerations.

What would happen if two processes built the summary concurrently? How
would they find the other tuple, so that we don't end up with two BRIN
tuples for the same range?

Well, the revmap can only keep track of one tuple per range; if two
processes build summary tuples, and each tries to insert its tuple in a
regular page, that part may succeed; but then only one of them is going
to successfully register the summary tuple in the revmap: when the other
goes to do the same, it would find that a CTID is already present.

... Looking at the code (brinSetHeapBlockItemptr), I think what happens
here is that the second process would overwrite the TID with its own.
Not sure if it would work to see whether the item is empty and bail out
if it's not.

But in any case, it seems to me that the update of the regular page is
pretty much independent of the update of the revmap.

Another point: to desummarize a range, just unlinking the entry from
revmap should suffice, from the POV of other index scanners. Maybe we
can simplify the whole procedure to: lock revmap, remove entry, remember
page number, unlock revmap; lock regular page, delete entry, unlock.
Then there are no two locks held at the same time during desummarize.

Perhaps, as long as it doesn't confuse anything else.

Well, I don't have the details fresh in mind, but I think it shouldn't,
because the only way to reach a regular tuple is coming from the revmap;
and we reuse "items" (lines) in a regular page only when they are
empty (so vacuuming should also be OK).

This comes from v16:

I don't follow - what do you mean by v16? I don't see anything like that
anywhere in the repository.

I meant the minmax-proposal file in patch v16, the one that I linked to.

--
Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"You're _really_ hosed if the person doing the hiring doesn't understand
relational systems: you end up with a whole raft of programmers, none of
whom has had a Date with the clue stick." (Andrew Sullivan)

Hello Tomas and Alvaro,

Came across this old thread while searching for information about brin,
and decided to try to fix it.

On 22.02.2023 17:41, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

On 2023-Feb-22, Tomas Vondra wrote:

... and in there, I wrote that we would first write the brin tuple in
the regular page, unlock that, and then lock the revmap for the update,
without holding lock on the data page.  I don't remember why we do it
differently now, but maybe the fix is just to release the regular page
lock before locking the revmap page?  One very important change is that
in previous versions the revmap used a separate fork, and we had to
introduce an "evacuation protocol" when we integrated the revmap into
the main fork, which may have changed the locking considerations.

What would happen if two processes built the summary concurrently? How
would they find the other tuple, so that we don't end up with two BRIN
tuples for the same range?

Well, the revmap can only keep track of one tuple per range; if two
processes build summary tuples, and each tries to insert its tuple in a
regular page, that part may succeed; but then only one of them is going
to successfully register the summary tuple in the revmap: when the other
goes to do the same, it would find that a CTID is already present.

... Looking at the code (brinSetHeapBlockItemptr), I think what happens
here is that the second process would overwrite the TID with its own.
Not sure if it would work to see whether the item is empty and bail out
if it's not.

AFAIS it's impossible to have two processes summarizing or desummarizing
ranges simultaneously,
because you need ShareUpdateExclusiveLock to do it. Usual inserts /
updates can't lead
to summarization, they affects only those ranges that are summarized
already.

Another point: to desummarize a range, just unlinking the entry from
revmap should suffice, from the POV of other index scanners.  Maybe we
can simplify the whole procedure to: lock revmap, remove entry,

remember

page number, unlock revmap; lock regular page, delete entry, unlock.
Then there are no two locks held at the same time during desummarize.

Perhaps, as long as it doesn't confuse anything else.

Well, I don't have the details fresh in mind, but I think it shouldn't,
because the only way to reach a regular tuple is coming from the revmap;
and we reuse "items" (lines) in a regular page only when they are
empty (so vacuuming should also be OK).

I think it would work, but there's one thing to handle in this case:
You may have a concurrent update that moved the index tuple to another
reg page and wants to update
the revmap page with a new pointer. This may happen after the revmap
entry is deleted,
so you can have kind of lost update. But this seems to be easy to detect:
when you try to delete the index tuple, you'll see an unused item.
This means that a concurrent update moved index tuple and updated revmap
page and you need to retry the desummarization.

Also if you don't hold locks on both revmap page and regular pages, you
will have
to split wal record and rework recovery for desummarization. And
probably in case of crash between revmap update
and regular page update you can have dangling index tuple, so it seems
that having one wal record for update simplifies
recovery.

I think there is a straightforward way to implement desummarization and
fix the deadlock.
Desummarization is actually very similar to usual update, so we can just
use update flow
(like brininsert or second part of summarize_range where you need to
merge summary with placeholder tuple):
- lock revmap page
- save pointer to the index tuple
- unlock revmap page
- lock regular page
- check if pointer is still valid (blkno is as expected, NORMAL tuple etc.)
  if we see that pointer is not valid anymore -> unlock reg page + retry
- lock revmap page
- update reg page and revmap page

First five steps have been implemented already in
brinGetTupleForHeapBlock, so we can use it (like every update actually
do, if I see correctly).

Please find the attached patch implementing the above idea.

I tried Tomas's stress tests with applied patch and didn't have deadlocks.

Also there is a another way how issue can be reproduced:
apply deadlock-sleep.patch (it just adds 15 sec sleep in brin_doupdate
and few logs)
execute deadlock.sql
execute deadlock2.sql from another client (there are 15 seconds to do it
while first process is sleeping).

Best regards,
Arseniy Mukhin