Fix race when updating a tuple concurrently locked by another process
If a tuple is locked, and this lock is later upgraded either to an
update or to a stronger lock, and in the meantime some other process
tries to lock, update or delete the same tuple, it (the tuple) could end
up being updated twice, or having conflicting locks held.
The reason for this is that the second updater checks for a change in
Xmax value, or in the HEAP_XMAX_IS_MULTI infomask bit, after noticing
the first lock; and if there's a change, it restarts and re-evaluates
its ability to update the tuple. But it neglected to check for changes
in lock strength or in lock-vs-update status when those two properties
stayed the same. This would lead it to take the wrong decision and
continue with its own update, when in reality it shouldn't do so but
instead restart from the top.
This could lead to either an assertion failure much later (when a
multixact containing multiple updates is detected), or duplicate copies
of tuples.
To fix, make sure to compare the other relevant infomask bits alongside
the Xmax value and HEAP_XMAX_IS_MULTI bit, and restart from the top if
necessary.
Also, in the belt-and-suspenders spirit, add a check to
MultiXactCreateFromMembers that a multixact being created does not have
two or more members that are claimed to be updates. This should protect
against other bugs that might cause similar bogus situations.
Backpatch to 9.3, where the possibility of multixacts containing updates
was introduced. (In prior versions it was possible to have the tuple
lock upgraded from shared to exclusive, and an update would not restart
from the top; yet we're protected against a bug there because there's
always a sleep to wait for the locking transaction to complete before
continuing to do anything. Really, the fact that tuple locks always
conflicted with concurrent updates is what protected against bugs here.)
Per report from Andrew Dunstan and Josh Berkus in thread at
http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/534C8B33.9050807@pgexperts.com
Bug analysis by Andres Freund.
Branch
------
REL9_3_STABLE
Details
-------
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c0bd128c81c2b23a1cbc53305180fca51b3b61c3
Modified Files
--------------
src/backend/access/heap/heapam.c | 42 +++++++++++++++++++++++---------
src/backend/access/transam/multixact.c | 18 +++++++++++++-
src/include/access/multixact.h | 4 +++
3 files changed, 51 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)