According to buildfarm member silverfish, https://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=silverfish&dt=2018-01-06%2008%3A53%3A38
it's possible to sometimes get this failure in the regression tests: *** /mnt/buildfarm/buildroot/HEAD/pgsql.build/../pgsql/src/test/regress/expected/select_parallel.out Tue Dec 19 20:24:02 2017 --- /mnt/buildfarm/buildroot/HEAD/pgsql.build/src/test/regress/results/select_parallel.out Sat Jan 6 09:21:39 2018 *************** *** 75,84 **** Workers Planned: 3 -> Partial Aggregate -> Parallel Append -> Seq Scan on d_star -> Seq Scan on f_star -> Seq Scan on e_star - -> Seq Scan on b_star -> Seq Scan on c_star -> Seq Scan on a_star (11 rows) --- 75,84 ---- Workers Planned: 3 -> Partial Aggregate -> Parallel Append + -> Seq Scan on b_star -> Seq Scan on d_star -> Seq Scan on f_star -> Seq Scan on e_star -> Seq Scan on c_star -> Seq Scan on a_star (11 rows) Irreproducible failures in the regression tests are not very acceptable. Furthermore, considering that the query being tested is explain (costs off) select round(avg(aa)), sum(aa) from a_star; it seems to me that the "expected" order of the sub-scans is mighty random to begin with. A non-parallel implementation of the same query will consistently scan these tables in their inheritance order: Aggregate -> Append -> Seq Scan on a_star -> Seq Scan on b_star -> Seq Scan on c_star -> Seq Scan on d_star -> Seq Scan on e_star -> Seq Scan on f_star Could we fix the parallel case to behave similarly please? regards, tom lane