pg.ddx.io  pgsql-performance@postgresql.org mailing list archive  
help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Jim Jarvie <jim@talentstack.to>
To: pgsql-performance@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Is there a known bug with SKIP LOCKED and "tuple to be locked was already moved to another partition due to concurrent update"?
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 18:58:29 -0400
Message-ID: <65b230ec-56a9-a2fc-d0c1-5ed9e31c2f48@talentstack.to> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4f379a07-c49b-14dd-ddba-e0aaf37235d5@pragmaticdata.com>
References: <4f379a07-c49b-14dd-ddba-e0aaf37235d5@pragmaticdata.com>

Hi Gunther & List,

I think I have an extremely similar issue and things point in the same 
direction of a potential issue for skip locked on partitioned tables.

Background is I had a queue table on v9.6 with fairly high volume (>50M 
items, growth in the 1+M/daily).

Processing the queue with FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED was reliable but 
traffic volumes on v9.6 and the fact v12 is current let to migrating to 
v12 and using a partitioned table.

Queue has distinct categories of items, so the table is partitioned by 
list on each category.  Processing in 1 category results in it being 
updated to the next logical category (i.e. it will migrate partition 
once it is processed).

Within each category, there can be 10'sM rows, so the list partition is 
hash partitioned as well.  I don't think this is the issue but is 
mentioned for completeness.

Now, when processing the queue, there are regular transaction aborts 
with "tuple to be locked was already moved to another partition due to 
concurrent update".

 From everything I can trace, it really does look like this is caused by 
rows which should be locked/skipped as they are processed by a different 
thread.

I tried switching 'for update' to 'for key share' and that created a 
cascade of deadlock aborts, so was worse for my situation.

For now, I roll back and repeat the select for update skip locked until 
it succeeds - which it eventually does.

However, it really feels like these should just have been skipped by 
PostgreSQL without the rollback/retry until success.

So, am I missing something/doing it wrong?  Or could there be a 
potential issue that needs raised?

Thanks

Jim



On 30-Jun.-2020 12:10, Gunther Schadow wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> long time ago I devised with your help a task queuing system which 
> uses SELECT ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED for many parallel workers to 
> find tasks in the queue, and it used a partitioned table where the hot 
> part of the queue is short and so the query for a job is quick and the 
> skip locked locking makes sure that one job is only assigned to one 
> worker. And this works pretty well for me, except that when we run 
> many workers we find a lot of these failures occurring:
>
> "tuple to be locked was already moved to another partition due to 
> concurrent update"
>
> This would not exactly look like a bug, because the message says "to 
> be locked", so at least it's not allowing two workers to lock the same 
> tuple. But it seems that the skip-locked mode should not make an error 
> out of this, but treat it as the tuple was already locked. Why would 
> it want to lock the tuple (representing the job) if another worker has 
> already finished his UPDATE of the job to mark it as "done" (which is 
> what makes the tuple move to the "completed" partition.)
>
> Either the SELECT for jobs to do returned a wrong tuple, which was 
> already update, or there is some lapse in the locking.
>
> Either way it would seem to be a waste of time throwing all these 
> errors when the tuple should not even have been selected for update 
> and locking.
>
> I wonder if anybody knows anything about that issue? Of course you'll 
> want to see the DDL and SQL queries, etc. but you can't really try it 
> out unless you do some massively parallel magic. So I figured I just ask.
>
> regards,
> -Gunther
>
>
>
>
>

view thread (5+ messages)  latest in thread

Message-ID: <65b230ec-56a9-a2fc-d0c1-5ed9e31c2f48@talentstack.to>
Permalink:  ../65b230ec-56a9-a2fc-d0c1-5ed9e31c2f48@talentstack.to/
Also on:    postgresql.org/message-id/65b230ec-56a9-a2fc-d0c1-5ed9e31c2f48@talentstack.to

 · 

reply

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
  reply via email

  To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
  Cc: jim@talentstack.to, pgsql-performance@lists.postgresql.org
  Subject: Re: Is there a known bug with SKIP LOCKED and "tuple to be locked was already moved to another partition due to concurrent update"?
  In-Reply-To: <65b230ec-56a9-a2fc-d0c1-5ed9e31c2f48@talentstack.to>

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

This inbox is served by DDX for PostgreSQL; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox