Subject: [PATCH v2 3/4] tests: Fix race condition in postmaster/002_connection_limits

From: Andres Freund <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:44:00 -0500

The test occasionally failed due to unexpected connection limit errors being
encountered after having waited for FATAL errors on another connection. These
spurious failures were caused by the the backend reporting FATAL errors to the
client before detaching from the PGPROC entry. Adding a sleep(1) before
proc_exit() makes it easy to reproduce that problem.

To fix the issue, add a helper function that waits for postmaster to notice
the process having exited. For now this is implemented by waiting for the
DEBUG2 message that postmaster logs in that case. That's not the prettiest
fix, but simple. If we notice this problem elsewhere, it might be worthwhile
to make this more general, e.g. by adding an injection point.

Reported-by: Tomas Vondra <[email-masked]>
Diagnosed-by: Heikki Linnakangas <[email-masked]>
Reviewed-by: Heikki Linnakangas <[email-masked]>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/ggflhkciwdyotpoie323chu2c2idpjk5qimrn462encwx2io7s@thmcxl7i6dpw
---
 .../postmaster/t/002_connection_limits.pl     | 35 +++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/test/postmaster/t/002_connection_limits.pl b/src/test/postmaster/t/002_connection_limits.pl
index 8cfa6e0ced5..2c185eef6eb 100644
--- a/src/test/postmaster/t/002_connection_limits.pl
+++ b/src/test/postmaster/t/002_connection_limits.pl
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ $node->append_conf('postgresql.conf', "max_connections = 6");
 $node->append_conf('postgresql.conf', "reserved_connections = 2");
 $node->append_conf('postgresql.conf', "superuser_reserved_connections = 1");
 $node->append_conf('postgresql.conf', "log_connections = on");
+$node->append_conf('postgresql.conf', "log_min_messages=debug2");
 $node->start;
 
 $node->safe_psql(
@@ -45,13 +46,39 @@ sub background_psql_as_user
 		extra_params => [ '-U', $user ]);
 }
 
+# Like connect_fails(), except that we also wait for the failed backend to
+# have exited.
+#
+# This tests needs to wait for client processes to exit because the error
+# message for a failed connection is reported before the backend has detached
+# from shared memory. If we didn't wait, subsequent tests might hit connection
+# limits spuriously.
+#
+# This can't easily be generalized, as detecting process exit requires
+# log_min_messages to be at least DEBUG2 and is not concurrency safe, as we
+# can't easily be sure the right process exited. In this test that's not a
+# problem though, we only have one new connection at a time.
+sub connect_fails_wait
+{
+	local $Test::Builder::Level = $Test::Builder::Level + 1;
+	my ($node, $connstr, $test_name, %params) = @_;
+
+	my $log_location = -s $node->logfile;
+
+	$node->connect_fails($connstr, $test_name, %params);
+	$node->wait_for_log(qr/DEBUG:  client backend.*exited with exit code 1/,
+		$log_location);
+	ok(1, "$test_name: client backend process exited");
+}
+
 my @sessions = ();
 my @raw_connections = ();
 
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_regular'));
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_regular'));
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_regular'));
-$node->connect_fails(
+connect_fails_wait(
+	$node,
 	"dbname=postgres user=regress_regular",
 	"reserved_connections limit",
 	expected_stderr =>
@@ -60,7 +87,8 @@ $node->connect_fails(
 
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_reserved'));
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_reserved'));
-$node->connect_fails(
+connect_fails_wait(
+	$node,
 	"dbname=postgres user=regress_regular",
 	"reserved_connections limit",
 	expected_stderr =>
@@ -68,7 +96,8 @@ $node->connect_fails(
 );
 
 push(@sessions, background_psql_as_user('regress_superuser'));
-$node->connect_fails(
+connect_fails_wait(
+	$node,
 	"dbname=postgres user=regress_superuser",
 	"superuser_reserved_connections limit",
 	expected_stderr => qr/FATAL:  sorry, too many clients already/);
-- 
2.48.1.76.g4e746b1a31.dirty

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