Preserve memory context of VarStringSortSupport buffers.

tglsfdc · tglsfdc · commit ee8a2f9d7caa · 2022-08-14T12:05:27.000-04:00
When enlarging the work buffers of a VarStringSortSupport object, varstrfastcmp_locale was careful to keep them in the ssup_cxt memory context; but varstr_abbrev_convert just used palloc(). The latter creates a hazard that the buffers could be freed out from under the VarStringSortSupport object, resulting in stomping on whatever gets allocated in that memory later. In practice, because we only use this code for ICU collations (cf. 3df9c37), the problem is confined to use of ICU collations. I believe it may have been unreachable before the introduction of incremental sort, too, as traditional sorting usually just uses one context for the duration of the sort. We could fix this by making the broken stanzas in varstr_abbrev_convert match the non-broken ones in varstrfastcmp_locale. However, it seems like a better idea to dodge the issue altogether by replacing the pfree-and-allocate-anew coding with repalloc, which automatically preserves the chunk's memory context. This fix does add a few cycles because repalloc will copy the chunk's content, which the existing coding assumes is useless. However, we don't expect that these buffer enlargement operations are performance-critical. Besides that, it's far from obvious that copying the buffer contents isn't required, since these stanzas make no effort to mark the buffers invalid by resetting last_returned, cache_blob, etc. That seems to be safe upon examination, but it's fragile and could easily get broken in future, which wouldn't get revealed in testing with short-to-moderate-size strings. Per bug #17584 from James Inform. Whether or not the issue is reachable in the older branches, this code has been broken on its own terms from its introduction, so patch all the way back. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/17584-95c79b4a7d771f44@postgresql.org
diff --git a/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c b/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
@@ -77,8 +77,8 @@ typedef struct
 	char	   *buf1;			/* 1st string, or abbreviation original string
 								 * buf */
 	char	   *buf2;			/* 2nd string, or abbreviation strxfrm() buf */
-	int			buflen1;
-	int			buflen2;
+	int			buflen1;		/* Allocated length of buf1 */
+	int			buflen2;		/* Allocated length of buf2 */
 	int			last_len1;		/* Length of last buf1 string/strxfrm() input */
 	int			last_len2;		/* Length of last buf2 string/strxfrm() blob */
 	int			last_returned;	/* Last comparison result (cache) */
@@ -2297,15 +2297,13 @@ varstrfastcmp_locale(char *a1p, int len1, char *a2p, int len2, SortSupport ssup)
 
 	if (len1 >= sss->buflen1)
 	{
-		pfree(sss->buf1);
 		sss->buflen1 = Max(len1 + 1, Min(sss->buflen1 * 2, MaxAllocSize));
-		sss->buf1 = MemoryContextAlloc(ssup->ssup_cxt, sss->buflen1);
+		sss->buf1 = repalloc(sss->buf1, sss->buflen1);
 	}
 	if (len2 >= sss->buflen2)
 	{
-		pfree(sss->buf2);
 		sss->buflen2 = Max(len2 + 1, Min(sss->buflen2 * 2, MaxAllocSize));
-		sss->buf2 = MemoryContextAlloc(ssup->ssup_cxt, sss->buflen2);
+		sss->buf2 = repalloc(sss->buf2, sss->buflen2);
 	}
 
 	/*
@@ -2506,9 +2504,8 @@ varstr_abbrev_convert(Datum original, SortSupport ssup)
 		/* By convention, we use buffer 1 to store and NUL-terminate */
 		if (len >= sss->buflen1)
 		{
-			pfree(sss->buf1);
 			sss->buflen1 = Max(len + 1, Min(sss->buflen1 * 2, MaxAllocSize));
-			sss->buf1 = palloc(sss->buflen1);
+			sss->buf1 = repalloc(sss->buf1, sss->buflen1);
 		}
 
 		/* Might be able to reuse strxfrm() blob from last call */
@@ -2595,10 +2592,9 @@ varstr_abbrev_convert(Datum original, SortSupport ssup)
 			/*
 			 * Grow buffer and retry.
 			 */
-			pfree(sss->buf2);
 			sss->buflen2 = Max(bsize + 1,
 							   Min(sss->buflen2 * 2, MaxAllocSize));
-			sss->buf2 = palloc(sss->buflen2);
+			sss->buf2 = repalloc(sss->buf2, sss->buflen2);
 		}
 
 		/*
