Re: backends stuck in "startup"

why is that I did not receive the first 4 emails on this topic?  I see that only the old email address
"pgsql-general@postgresql.org"is mentioned.  Could that be the reason ? 

ps: I am adding the new lists address.


========
On 2017-11-21 19:02:01 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> andres@anarazel.de (Andres Freund) writes:
> > On 2017-11-21 18:50:05 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> (If Justin saw that while still on 9.6, then it'd be worth looking
> >> closer.)
>
> > Right. I took this to be referring to something before the current
> > migration, but I might have overinterpreted things. There've been
> > various forks/ports of pg around that had hand-coded replacements with
> > futex usage, and there were definitely buggy versions going around a few
> > years back.
>
> Poking around in the archives reminded me of this thread:
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/14947.1475690465@sss.pgh.pa.us
> which describes symptoms uncomfortably close to what Justin is showing.
>
> I remember speculating that the SysV-sema implementation, because it'd
> always enter the kernel, would provide some memory barrier behavior
> that POSIX-sema code based on futexes might miss when taking the no-wait
> path.

I think I was speculating that, but with the benefit of just having had
my fourth espresso: I've a hard time believing that - the fast path in a
futex pretty much has to be either a test-and-set or a
compare-and-exchange type operation. See e.g. the demo of futex usage in
the futex(2) manpage:

while (1) {   /* Is the futex available? */   if (__sync_bool_compare_and_swap(futexp, 1, 0))       break;      /* Yes
*/
   /* Futex is not available; wait */   s = futex(futexp, FUTEX_WAIT, 0, NULL, NULL, 0);   if (s == -1 && errno !=
EAGAIN)      errExit("futex-FUTEX_WAIT"); 
}

I can't see how you could make use of futexes without some kind of
barrier semantics, at least on x86.

Greetings,

Andres Freund