postgres.git / summary / log / commit / refs

commit    d84d62b6225b4af86cd9837b71f6fd2cf33fe80c
Author:   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date:     Wed Sep 15 16:31:56 2021 +0000

    Disallow LISTEN in background workers.
    
    It's possible to execute user-defined SQL in some background processes;
    for example, logical replication workers can fire triggers.  This opens
    the possibility that someone would try to execute LISTEN in such a
    context.  But since only regular backends ever call
    ProcessNotifyInterrupt, no messages would actually be received, and
    thus the registered listener would simply prevent the message queue
    from being cleaned.  Eventually NOTIFY would stop working, which is bad.
    
    Perhaps someday somebody will invent infrastructure to make listening
    in a background worker actually useful.  In the meantime, forbid it.
    
    Back-patch to v13, which is where we introduced the MyBackendType
    variable.  It'd be a lot harder to implement the check without that,
    and it doesn't seem worth the trouble.
    
    Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/153243441449.1404.2274116228506175596@wrigleys.postgresql.org


 src/backend/tcop/utility.c | 17 +++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

diff --git a/src/backend/tcop/utility.c b/src/backend/tcop/utility.c
index 7a2da9dab43..7d81d010c51 100644
--- a/src/backend/tcop/utility.c
+++ b/src/backend/tcop/utility.c
@@ -803,6 +803,23 @@ standard_ProcessUtility(PlannedStmt *pstmt,
 				ListenStmt *stmt = (ListenStmt *) parsetree;
 
 				CheckRestrictedOperation("LISTEN");
+
+				/*
+				 * We don't allow LISTEN in background processes, as there is
+				 * no mechanism for them to collect NOTIFY messages, so they'd
+				 * just block cleanout of the async SLRU indefinitely.
+				 * (Authors of custom background workers could bypass this
+				 * restriction by calling Async_Listen directly, but then it's
+				 * on them to provide some mechanism to process the message
+				 * queue.)  Note there seems no reason to forbid UNLISTEN.
+				 */
+				if (MyBackendType != B_BACKEND)
+					ereport(ERROR,
+							(errcode(ERRCODE_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED),
+					/* translator: %s is name of a SQL command, eg LISTEN */
+							 errmsg("cannot execute %s within a background process",
+									"LISTEN")));
+
 				Async_Listen(stmt->conditionname);
 			}
 			break;


[parent: 9b2fd490577b]