From: Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>
To: Bharath Rupireddy <bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com>
cc: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>,
    PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
    alvherre@kurilemu.de
Subject: Re: REPACK (CONCURRENTLY) backend waits indefinitely when decoding
 worker fails to start
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Comments: In-reply-to Bharath Rupireddy
 <bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com>
   message dated "Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:20:00 -0700."
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Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:31:35 +0200
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Bharath Rupireddy <bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 27, 2026 at 9:47=E2=80=AFAM Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gm=
ail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 27, 2026 at 09:41:49AM -0700, Bharath Rupireddy wrote:
> > > REPACK (CONCURRENTLY) starts a decoding bgworker and then waits in
> > > start_repack_decoding_worker() for the worker to set a shared-memory
> > > flag. The wait has no liveness check on the worker itself. If the
> > > worker never reaches that point (e.g., fork failure under memory
> > > pressure, or when BecomeLockGroupMember() returns false, or early exit
> > > before the shm_mq error redirect is set up), the backend waits
> > > indefinitely with no way out other than cancellation. I reproduced
> > > this with an induced fork failure, so I think we need to tighten this
> > > for both PG19 and HEAD branches.
> >
> > Oops, I just concurrently reported this [0].  Note that teardown can
> > deadlock, too.
> >
> > [0] https://postgr.es/m/apBpOVZOyqrakEr_%40nathan
>=20
> Thanks. Here's my first attempt at fixing both the fork failure hang
> and the teardown deadlock. I tried to use the parallel query approach
> as much as possible.
>=20
> The fork failure hang can occur because the backend running concurrent
> repack sleeps on a CV and ignores the SIGUSR1 sent via bgw_notify_pid
> by the postmaster upon fork failure.
>=20
> The teardown deadlock can occur because the backend waits for the
> worker to exit before detaching the error queue, while the worker is
> blocked writing to a full queue, so both end up waiting on each other.
>=20
> Although these issues seem rare to hit, I think it's good to tighten
> the repack code because users can see them via SQL. Therefore, I think
> we need to backpatch these to PG19. Please have a look at the attached
> patch.

Thanks for the fix(es). One thing I'm not sure I understand is:

@@ -3851,9 +3900,11 @@ ProcessRepackMessages(void)
=20
 	/*
 	 * Nothing to do if we haven't launched the worker yet or have already
-	 * terminated it.
+	 * terminated it. stop_repack_decoding_worker() detaches the error queue
+	 * before clearing decoding_worker, so also bail out once error_mqh is
+	 * gone.
 	 */
-	if (decoding_worker =3D=3D NULL)
+	if (decoding_worker =3D=3D NULL || decoding_worker->error_mqh =3D=3D NULL)
 		return;
=20
 	/*

I don't think that stop_repack_decoding_worker() can clear ->error_mqh w/o
also clearing decoding_worker.

Other than that, I'm not sure you need to mention the condition variable in
the comments. And maybe even the mentions of parallel workers are not
necessary.

> While here, I noticed that the same wait event is used for both the
> worker startup wait and the file export wait. Ideally these would have
> separate wait events, but given that the startup wait is typically
> very short, reusing the same one seems fine.

I think that initially I also considered this situation not worth a new wait
event, but I probably had missed an existing one:
WAIT_EVENT_BGWORKER_STARTUP. It's already used for multiple workers, so we
could perhaps use it here.

--=20
Antonin Houska
Web: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com