Feedback-ID: ia2694551:Fastmail
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2024 20:00:52 +0100
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Denis Laxalde <denis.laxalde@dalibo.com>,
	vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>,
	Greg Stark <stark@mit.edu>, "Gregory Stark (as CFM)" <stark.cfm@gmail.com>,
	Jelte Fennema <Jelte.Fennema@microsoft.com>,
 Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>,
	Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>,
	Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
	"pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Add non-blocking version of PQcancel
Message-ID: <202403131900.6ih7a4dzqefu@alvherre.pgsql>
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On 2024-Mar-13, Jelte Fennema-Nio wrote:

> I agree it's probably a timing issue. The cancel being received after
> the query is done seems very unlikely, since the query takes 180
> seconds (assuming PG_TEST_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT is not lowered for these
> animals). I think it's more likely that the cancel request arrives too
> early, and thus being ignored because no query is running yet. The
> test already had logic to wait until the query backend was in the
> "active" state, before sending a cancel to solve that issue. But my
> guess is that that somehow isn't enough.
> 
> Sadly I'm having a hard time reliably reproducing this race condition
> locally. So it's hard to be sure what is happening here. Attached is a
> patch with a wild guess as to what the issue might be (i.e. seeing an
> outdated "active" state and thus passing the check even though the
> query is not running yet)

I tried leaving the original running in my laptop to see if I could
reproduce it, but got no hits ... and we didn't get any other failures
apart from the three ones already reported ... so it's not terribly high
probability.  Anyway I pushed your patch now since the theory seems
plausible; let's see if we still get the issue to reproduce.  If it
does, we could make the script more verbose to hunt for further clues.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera         PostgreSQL Developer  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"Here's a general engineering tip: if the non-fun part is too complex for you
to figure out, that might indicate the fun part is too ambitious." (John Naylor)
https://postgr.es/m/CAFBsxsG4OWHBbSDM%3DsSeXrQGOtkPiOEOuME4yD7Ce41NtaAD9g%40mail.gmail.com