Simon Riggs wrote:
OK, I think I've found a problem.

In _bt_insertonpg(), if we split we do _bt_split() then do
_bt_insert_parent(), which then does _bt_insertonpg() recursively.

_bt_split() writes a WAL record but continues holding write locks.
btree_xlog_split() reads WAL record and does *not* continue to hold
write locks. So recovery locking differs from Lehman & Yao requirements
at that point.

Hmm. I don't have Lehman & Yao's paper at hand, but I fail to see what would go wrong.

Recovery of a split works like this:

1. Reconstruct new right sibling from scratch. Keep locked
2. Update old page (= new left sibling). Keep locked
3. Release locks on both pages.
4. Update the left-link of the page to the right of the new right sibling.

Searches descending work just fine without the pointer in the parent page to the new right sibling, just slower because they will always land on the left sibling, and might have move right from there. Searchers moving from left to right work fine; they will see either the old page, or both the new left and right sibling. Searchers moving right to left will likewise work; they will see either the old page, or the new right, then left page, or between steps 3 and 4, they will move to the left page, see that the right-link doesn't point to the page it came from, and move right to the new right sibling.

All that works just like during normal operation, so I don't actually understand why L&Y requires that you keep the split pages locked until you've locked the parent. Maybe it's needed to handle concurrent inserts or splits, but there can't be any during WAL replay.

--
  Heikki Linnakangas
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

--
Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers

Reply via email to