Re: crash-safe visibility map, take three

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
>> It seems like you'll need to hold some kind of lock between the time
>> you examine RedoRecPtr and the time you actually examine the bit.
>> WALInsertLock in shared mode, maybe?
>
> It's enough to hold an exclusive lock on the visibility map page. You have
> to set the bit first, and then check RedoRecPtr, and if it changed, write
> the XLOG record before releasing the lock. If RedoRecPtr changes any time
> before we check RedoRecPtr, we'll write the XLOG record so we're safe. If it
> changes after that, we're safe because the checkpoint will flush the updated
> heap page and visibility map page.

Brilliant.  I assume that we need to call GetRedoRecPtr() after taking
the exclusive lock on the page, though?

> Yeah, possibly. It also means that the set bits will not propagate to
> standby servers, though.

That's definitely sucky, but in some ways it would be more complicated
if they did, because I don't think all-visible on the master implies
all-visible on the standby.

-- 
Robert Haas
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