Remove misleading hint for "unexpected data beyond EOF" error.

robertmhaas · robertmhaas · commit d5b9b2d40262 · 2025-07-28T11:15:47.000-04:00
Commit ffae5cc added this hint in 2006, but it's now obsolete and doesn't reflect what users should really check in this situation. We were not able to agree on a new hint, so just delete the existing one and update the comments to mention one possibility that is known to cause problems of this kind: something other than PostgreSQL is modifying files in the PostgreSQL data directory. Author: Jakub Wartak <jakub.wartak@enterprisedb.com> Reviewed-by: Robert Haas <rhaas@postgresql.org> Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> Reviewed-by: Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org> Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAKZiRmxNbcaL76x=09Sxf7aUmrRQJBf8drzDdUHo+j9_eM+VMg@mail.gmail.com
diff --git a/src/backend/storage/buffer/bufmgr.c b/src/backend/storage/buffer/bufmgr.c
@@ -2743,11 +2743,9 @@ ExtendBufferedRelShared(BufferManagerRelation bmr,
 		 * because mdread doesn't complain about reads beyond EOF (when
 		 * zero_damaged_pages is ON) and so a previous attempt to read a block
 		 * beyond EOF could have left a "valid" zero-filled buffer.
-		 * Unfortunately, we have also seen this case occurring because of
-		 * buggy Linux kernels that sometimes return an lseek(SEEK_END) result
-		 * that doesn't account for a recent write. In that situation, the
-		 * pre-existing buffer would contain valid data that we don't want to
-		 * overwrite.  Since the legitimate cases should always have left a
+		 *
+		 * This has also been observed when relation was overwritten by external
+		 * process. Since the legitimate cases should always have left a
 		 * zero-filled buffer, complain if not PageIsNew.
 		 */
 		if (existing_id >= 0)
@@ -2778,8 +2776,7 @@ ExtendBufferedRelShared(BufferManagerRelation bmr,
 				ereport(ERROR,
 						(errmsg("unexpected data beyond EOF in block %u of relation %s",
 								existing_hdr->tag.blockNum,
-								relpath(bmr.smgr->smgr_rlocator, fork).str),
-						 errhint("This has been seen to occur with buggy kernels; consider updating your system.")));
+								relpath(bmr.smgr->smgr_rlocator, fork).str)));
 
 			/*
 			 * We *must* do smgr[zero]extend before succeeding, else the page
