Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2017 15:57:50 -0500
From: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>,
	"Todd A. Cook" <tcook@blackducksoftware.com>,
	Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@enterprisedb.com>,
	PostgreSQL Bugs <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: BUG #14932: SELECT DISTINCT val FROM table gets stuck in an
 infinite loop
Message-ID: <20171206205750.GM4628@tamriel.snowman.net>
References: 
 <CAEepm=3SC9zYLKhvtZbsnwf9vEpi96WCGz1rdGLofuzBau=fqA@mail.gmail.com>
 <17357.1511841783@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <9cd29b81-7ba1-91a2-f491-9014f4ac87e6@blackducksoftware.com>
 <2a76784c-06cb-46ec-35be-9895d144b839@2ndquadrant.com>
 <263b03b1-3e1c-49ca-165a-8ac6751419c4@2ndquadrant.com>
 <20171206193545.3imvbfwjgrmuho3s@alap3.anarazel.de>
 <ebe8b411-006e-7863-3c60-67ddafe1c636@2ndquadrant.com>
 <790BC80E-D8E5-499B-A1E3-8EE0752B53ED@anarazel.de>
 <06523583-b9c5-1424-ef0a-1fc8063e9ed7@2ndquadrant.com>
 <20171206204616.wcect35fuj5gjde2@alap3.anarazel.de>
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Andres, all,

* Andres Freund (andres@anarazel.de) wrote:
> On 2017-12-06 21:38:42 +0100, Tomas Vondra wrote:
> > FWIW I've constructed the data sets for two reasons - to convince myself
> > that my understanding of the simplehash code is correct, and to provide
> > a data set triggering the other growth condition in simplehash code. My
> > understanding is that if we stop growing the table after the load factor
> > drops below some threshold (as TL proposed earlier in this thread), it
> > should address both of these cases.
>=20
> Yea, I'm not adverse to adding a few stopgaps that break in a less
> annoying manner. WAll I'm saying is that I don't think we need to be
> super concerned about this specific way of breaking things.

I think I'm agreeing with Tomas here when I say that we shouldn't have a
system that breaks in the "tries to allocate infinite memory" way when
the load factor drops far below some reasonable threshold and that we
*should* be concerned that we have this problem in the existing
implementation.  It's bad, and we should care about that and fix it.

Running forever in a loop isn't great either, but at least you only
expend at most one CPU to it and can go kill it, assuming we have an
appropriate CHECK_FOR_INTERRUPTS() placement.  Running the box out of
memory can lead to other things *failing* (even entirely reasonable
things!), not just being slower.  That's an important difference.

Thanks!

Stephen

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