Fix race in dsm_attach() when handles are reused.

macdice · macdice · commit 6c0fb9418925 · 2019-02-15T14:05:09.000+13:00
DSM handle values can be reused as soon as the underlying shared memory object has been destroyed. That means that for a brief moment we might have two DSM slots with the same handle. While trying to attach, if we encounter a slot with refcnt == 1, meaning that it is currently being destroyed, we should continue our search in case the same handle exists in another slot. The race manifested as a rare "dsa_area could not attach to segment" error, and was more likely in 10 and 11 due to the lack of distinct seed for random() in parallel workers. It was made very unlikely in in master by commit 197e4af, and older releases don't usually create new DSM segments in background workers so it was also unlikely there. This fixes the root cause of bug report #15585, in which the error could also sometimes result in a self-deadlock in the error path. It's not yet clear if further changes are needed to avoid that failure mode. Back-patch to 9.4, where dsm.c arrived. Author: Thomas Munro Reported-by: Justin Pryzby, Sergei Kornilov Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20190207014719.GJ29720@telsasoft.com Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/15585-324ff6a93a18da46@postgresql.org
diff --git a/src/backend/storage/ipc/dsm.c b/src/backend/storage/ipc/dsm.c
@@ -569,22 +569,20 @@ dsm_attach(dsm_handle h)
 	nitems = dsm_control->nitems;
 	for (i = 0; i < nitems; ++i)
 	{
-		/* If the reference count is 0, the slot is actually unused. */
-		if (dsm_control->item[i].refcnt == 0)
+		/*
+		 * If the reference count is 0, the slot is actually unused.  If the
+		 * reference count is 1, the slot is still in use, but the segment is
+		 * in the process of going away; even if the handle matches, another
+		 * slot may already have started using the same handle value by
+		 * coincidence so we have to keep searching.
+		 */
+		if (dsm_control->item[i].refcnt <= 1)
 			continue;
 
 		/* If the handle doesn't match, it's not the slot we want. */
 		if (dsm_control->item[i].handle != seg->handle)
 			continue;
 
-		/*
-		 * If the reference count is 1, the slot is still in use, but the
-		 * segment is in the process of going away.  Treat that as if we
-		 * didn't find a match.
-		 */
-		if (dsm_control->item[i].refcnt == 1)
-			break;
-
 		/* Otherwise we've found a match. */
 		dsm_control->item[i].refcnt++;
 		seg->control_slot = i;
