Re: BUG #6425: Bus error in slot_deform_tuple

On 1 Feb 2012, at 18:10, Robert Haas wrote:
> I went looking for commits that might be relevant to this that are new
> in 9.0.6, also present in 9.1.2 (per 6200), and related to t_hoff, and
> came up with this one:
>=20
> Branch: master [039680aff] 2011-11-04 23:22:50 -0400

I looked at this and it seems specific to doing an ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, =
which we're not in this case.

I mentioned in the bug report that I has asserts in places were t_hoff is s=
et. I've been doing it like so:

if (hoff % 4 !=3D 0) {
  elog(ERROR, "wrong hoff: %d",hoff);
  abort();
}

I've been sitting here waiting for the server to abort and only just realis=
ed there are some interesting entries in my pgbench logs. I'm using pgbench=
 to hammer the server with queries, and I have a handful of these:

Client 87 aborted in state 8: ERROR:  wrong hoff: 134

I have these abort() calls in:

backend/access/common/heaptuple.c
backend/access/heap/heapam.c
backend/access/heap/tuptoaster.c

But I know from the text that it must have been from either slot_deform_tup=
le(), heap_form_tuple() or heap_form_minimal_tuple() in heaptuple.c.

What I don't get is why this is causing the client to abort, and not the ba=
ckend.

What can I do to get the server to abort at this point? Use PANIC instead o=
f ERROR in the elog call perhaps?