Re: Bugs in CREATE/DROP INDEX CONCURRENTLY

On 6 October 2012 00:56, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> 1.  These operations think they can use ordinary heap_update operations
> to change pg_index entries when they don't have exclusive lock on the
> parent table.  The lack of ex-lock means that another backend could be
> currently loading up its list of index OIDs for the table --- and since
> it scans pg_index with SnapshotNow to do that, the heap_update could
> result in the other backend failing to see this index *at all*.  That's
> okay if it causes the other backend to not use the index for scanning...
> but not okay if it causes the other backend to fail to make index
> entries it is supposed to make.
>
> I think this could possibly be fixed by using nontransactional
> update-in-place when we're trying to change indisvalid and/or
> indisready, but I've not really thought through the details.
>
> 2.  DROP INDEX CONCURRENTLY doesn't bother to do
> TransferPredicateLocksToHeapRelation until long after it's invalidated
> the index.  Surely that's no good?  Is it even possible to do that
> correctly, when we don't have a lock that will prevent new predicate
> locks from being taken out meanwhile?

I'm in the middle of reviewing other fixes there, so will comment
soon, just not right now.

-- Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services