postgresql/src/backend/replication
Tom Lane 6a3d3965d6 Fix core dump in ReorderBufferRestoreChange on alignment-picky platforms.
When re-reading an update involving both an old tuple and a new tuple from
disk, reorderbuffer.c was careless about whether the new tuple is suitably
aligned for direct access --- in general, it isn't.  We'd missed seeing
this in the buildfarm because the contrib/test_decoding tests exercise this
code path only a few times, and by chance all of those cases have old
tuples with length a multiple of 4, which is usually enough to make the
access to the new tuple's t_len safe.  For some still-not-entirely-clear
reason, however, Debian's sparc build gets a bus error, as reported by
Christoph Berg; perhaps it's assuming 8-byte alignment of the pointer?

The lack of previous field reports is probably because you need all of
these conditions to trigger a crash: an alignment-picky platform (not
Intel), a transaction large enough to spill to disk, an update within
that xact that changes a primary-key field and has an odd-length old tuple,
and of course logical decoding tracing the transaction.

Avoid the alignment assumption by using memcpy instead of fetching t_len
directly, and add a test case that exposes the crash on picky platforms.
Back-patch to 9.4 where the bug was introduced.

Discussion: <20160413094117.GC21485@msg.credativ.de>
2016-04-14 19:42:21 -04:00
..
libpqwalreceiver Adjust signature of walrcv_receive hook. 2016-04-14 13:49:37 -04:00
logical Fix core dump in ReorderBufferRestoreChange on alignment-picky platforms. 2016-04-14 19:42:21 -04:00
.gitignore Support multiple synchronous standby servers. 2016-04-06 17:18:25 +09:00
basebackup.c Implement backup API functions for non-exclusive backups 2016-04-05 20:03:49 +02:00
Makefile Support multiple synchronous standby servers. 2016-04-06 17:18:25 +09:00
README Adjust signature of walrcv_receive hook. 2016-04-14 13:49:37 -04:00
repl_gram.y Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:40 -05:00
repl_scanner.l Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:40 -05:00
slot.c Fix error message from wal_level value renaming 2016-04-04 21:17:54 -04:00
slotfuncs.c Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:40 -05:00
syncrep.c Use ereport(ERROR) instead of Assert() to emit syncrep_parser error. 2016-04-11 15:52:27 +09:00
syncrep_gram.y Support multiple synchronous standby servers. 2016-04-06 17:18:25 +09:00
syncrep_scanner.l Support multiple synchronous standby servers. 2016-04-06 17:18:25 +09:00
walreceiver.c Adjust signature of walrcv_receive hook. 2016-04-14 13:49:37 -04:00
walreceiverfuncs.c Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:40 -05:00
walsender.c Remove unused function GetOldestWALSendPointer from walsender code. 2016-04-13 04:36:29 +09:00

src/backend/replication/README

Walreceiver - libpqwalreceiver API
----------------------------------

The transport-specific part of walreceiver, responsible for connecting to
the primary server, receiving WAL files and sending messages, is loaded
dynamically to avoid having to link the main server binary with libpq.
The dynamically loaded module is in libpqwalreceiver subdirectory.

The dynamically loaded module implements four functions:


bool walrcv_connect(char *conninfo, XLogRecPtr startpoint)

Establish connection to the primary, and starts streaming from 'startpoint'.
Returns true on success.

int walrcv_receive(char **buffer, pgsocket *wait_fd)

Retrieve any message available without blocking through the
connection.  If a message was successfully read, returns its
length. If the connection is closed, returns -1.  Otherwise returns 0
to indicate that no data is available, and sets *wait_fd to a socket
descriptor which can be waited on before trying again.  On success, a
pointer to the message payload is stored in *buffer. The returned
buffer is valid until the next call to walrcv_* functions, and the
caller should not attempt to free it.

void walrcv_send(const char *buffer, int nbytes)

Send a message to XLOG stream.

void walrcv_disconnect(void);

Disconnect.


This API should be considered internal at the moment, but we could open it
up for 3rd party replacements of libpqwalreceiver in the future, allowing
pluggable methods for receiving WAL.

Walreceiver IPC
---------------

When the WAL replay in startup process has reached the end of archived WAL,
restorable using restore_command, it starts up the walreceiver process
to fetch more WAL (if streaming replication is configured).

Walreceiver is a postmaster subprocess, so the startup process can't fork it
directly. Instead, it sends a signal to postmaster, asking postmaster to launch
it. Before that, however, startup process fills in WalRcvData->conninfo
and WalRcvData->slotname, and initializes the starting point in
WalRcvData->receiveStart.

As walreceiver receives WAL from the master server, and writes and flushes
it to disk (in pg_xlog), it updates WalRcvData->receivedUpto and signals
the startup process to know how far WAL replay can advance.

Walreceiver sends information about replication progress to the master server
whenever it either writes or flushes new WAL, or the specified interval elapses.
This is used for reporting purpose.

Walsender IPC
-------------

At shutdown, postmaster handles walsender processes differently from regular
backends. It waits for regular backends to die before writing the
shutdown checkpoint and terminating pgarch and other auxiliary processes, but
that's not desirable for walsenders, because we want the standby servers to
receive all the WAL, including the shutdown checkpoint, before the master
is shut down. Therefore postmaster treats walsenders like the pgarch process,
and instructs them to terminate at PM_SHUTDOWN_2 phase, after all regular
backends have died and checkpointer has issued the shutdown checkpoint.

When postmaster accepts a connection, it immediately forks a new process
to handle the handshake and authentication, and the process initializes to
become a backend. Postmaster doesn't know if the process becomes a regular
backend or a walsender process at that time - that's indicated in the
connection handshake - so we need some extra signaling to let postmaster
identify walsender processes.

When walsender process starts up, it marks itself as a walsender process in
the PMSignal array. That way postmaster can tell it apart from regular
backends.

Note that no big harm is done if postmaster thinks that a walsender is a
regular backend; it will just terminate the walsender earlier in the shutdown
phase. A walsender will look like a regular backend until it's done with the
initialization and has marked itself in PMSignal array, and at process
termination, after unmarking the PMSignal slot.

Each walsender allocates an entry from the WalSndCtl array, and tracks
information about replication progress. User can monitor them via
statistics views.


Walsender - walreceiver protocol
--------------------------------

See manual.