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2023-10-12Add option to bgworkers to allow the bypass of role login checkMichael Paquier
This adds a new option called BGWORKER_BYPASS_ROLELOGINCHECK to the flags available to BackgroundWorkerInitializeConnection() and BackgroundWorkerInitializeConnectionByOid(). This gives the possibility to bgworkers to bypass the role login check, making possible the use of a role that has no login rights while not being a superuser. PostgresInit() gains a new flag called INIT_PG_OVERRIDE_ROLE_LOGIN, taking advantage of the refactoring done in 4800a5dfb4c4. Regression tests are added to worker_spi to check the behavior of this new option with bgworkers. Author: Bertrand Drouvot Reviewed-by: Nathan Bossart, Michael Paquier, Bharath Rupireddy Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2023-07-03Increase size of bgw_library_name.Nathan Bossart
This commit increases the size of the bgw_library_name member of the BackgroundWorker struct from BGW_MAXLEN (96) bytes to MAXPGPATH (default of 1024) bytes so that it can store longer file names (e.g., absolute paths). Author: Yurii Rashkovskii Reviewed-by: Daniel Gustafsson, Aleksander Alekseev Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CA%2BRLCQyjFV5Y8tG5QgUb6gjteL4S3p%2B1gcyqWTqigyM93WZ9Pg%40mail.gmail.com
2022-10-14doc: Correct type of bgw_notify_pidPeter Eisentraut
This has apparently been wrong since the beginning (090d0f2050647958865cb495dff74af7257d2bb4). Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/[email protected]
2022-07-27Add missing PGDLLEXPORT markings in contrib/pg_prewarm.Tom Lane
After commit 089480c07, it's necessary for background worker entry points to be marked PGDLLEXPORT, else they aren't findable by LookupBackgroundWorkerFunction(). Since pg_prewarm lacks any regression tests, it's not surprising its worker entry points were overlooked. (A quick search turned up no other such oversights.) I added some documentation pointing out the need for this, too. Robins Tharakan and Tom Lane CAEP4nAzndnQv3-1QKb=D-hLoK3Rko12HHMFHHtdj2GQAUXO3gw@mail.gmail.com
2021-09-14Send NOTIFY signals during CommitTransaction.Tom Lane
Formerly, we sent signals for outgoing NOTIFY messages within ProcessCompletedNotifies, which was also responsible for sending relevant ones of those messages to our connected client. It therefore had to run during the main-loop processing that occurs just before going idle. This arrangement had two big disadvantages: * Now that procedures allow intra-command COMMITs, it would be useful to send NOTIFYs to other sessions immediately at COMMIT (though, for reasons of wire-protocol stability, we still shouldn't forward them to our client until end of command). * Background processes such as replication workers would not send NOTIFYs at all, since they never execute the client communication loop. We've had requests to allow triggers running in replication workers to send NOTIFYs, so that's a problem. To fix these things, move transmission of outgoing NOTIFY signals into AtCommit_Notify, where it will happen during CommitTransaction. Also move the possible call of asyncQueueAdvanceTail there, to ensure we don't bloat the async SLRU if a background worker sends many NOTIFYs with no one listening. We can also drop the call of asyncQueueReadAllNotifications, allowing ProcessCompletedNotifies to go away entirely. That's because commit 790026972 added a call of ProcessNotifyInterrupt adjacent to PostgresMain's call of ProcessCompletedNotifies, and that does its own call of asyncQueueReadAllNotifications, meaning that we were uselessly doing two such calls (inside two separate transactions) whenever inbound notify signals coincided with an outbound notify. We need only set notifyInterruptPending to ensure that ProcessNotifyInterrupt runs, and we're done. The existing documentation suggests that custom background workers should call ProcessCompletedNotifies if they want to send NOTIFY messages. To avoid an ABI break in the back branches, reduce it to an empty routine rather than removing it entirely. Removal will occur in v15. Although the problems mentioned above have existed for awhile, I don't feel comfortable back-patching this any further than v13. There was quite a bit of churn in adjacent code between 12 and 13. At minimum we'd have to also backpatch 51004c717, and a good deal of other adjustment would also be needed, so the benefit-to-risk ratio doesn't look attractive. Per bug #15293 from Michael Powers (and similar gripes from others). Artur Zakirov and Tom Lane Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2021-08-27docs: clarify bgw_restart_time documentationDaniel Gustafsson
Author: Dave Cramer <[email protected]> Reviewed-by: Tom Lane <[email protected]> Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CADK3HHLZmqAQZ2ByPDQQ9yhGqax36kksq6sDkV0yYzsxw6ipvQ@mail.gmail.com
2021-08-13Remove support for background workers without BGWORKER_SHMEM_ACCESS.Andres Freund
Background workers without shared memory access have been broken on EXEC_BACKEND / windows builds since shortly after background workers have been introduced, without that being reported. Clearly they are not commonly used. The problem is that bgworker startup requires to be attached to shared memory in EXEC_BACKEND child processes. StartBackgroundWorker() detaches from shared memory for unconnected workers, but at that point we already have initialized subsystems referencing shared memory. Fixing this problem is not entirely trivial, so removing the option to not be connected to shared memory seems the best way forward. In most use cases the advantages of being connected to shared memory far outweigh the disadvantages. As there have been no reports about this issue so far, we have decided that it is not worth trying to address the problem in the back branches. Per discussion with Alvaro Herrera, Robert Haas and Tom Lane. Author: Andres Freund <[email protected]> Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2020-09-09Minor fixes in docs and error messages.Tom Lane
Alexander Lakhin Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2020-05-10Doc: marginal hacking to remove some PDF build warnings.Tom Lane
This patch eliminates a few more "exceed the available area" warnings whose causes aren't particularly connected to anything else. The only one really worthy of comment is that I increased the space allowed for an <orderedlist>'s numbers, because the default of 1em doesn't quite work for more than one digit. The rest are one-off insertions of &zwsp; and suchlike tweaks, in places where they shouldn't do any damage to the material. (In particular, although I split some long identifiers with zwsp's, there are other nearby occurrences of each one; so those changes shouldn't hurt greppability of the document sources.)
2019-11-06doc: fix plurality typo on bgwriter doc sentenceBruce Momjian
Reported-by: [email protected] Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected] Backpatch-through: 9.4
2018-04-22Add missing documentation for BGWORKER_BYPASS_ALLOWCONNMagnus Hagander
This was missed in eed1ce72e1593d3e8b7461d7744808d4d6bf402b. Reported by Michael Paquier
2018-03-03doc: Improve wordingPeter Eisentraut
2018-03-01doc: Add WaitForBackgroundWorkerShutdown() to bgw docs.Andres Freund
Commit 924bcf4f16d added WaitForBackgroundWorkerShutdown, but didn't add it to the documentation. Fix that and two small spelling errors in the WaitForBackgroundWorkerStartup paragraph. Author: Daniel Gustafsson Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2018-01-24doc: clarify use of RegisterDynamicBackgroundWorkerBruce Momjian
Document likely use of RegisterDynamicBackgroundWorker by another background worker. Reported-by: Chapman Flack Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAB7nPqTdi=J9HH8PPPiEOohebdd+xkgbbhdY7=VbGnZ3CkZXxA@mail.gmail.com Author: Chapman Flack
2017-11-23Convert documentation to DocBook XMLPeter Eisentraut
Since some preparation work had already been done, the only source changes left were changing empty-element tags like <xref linkend="foo"> to <xref linkend="foo"/>, and changing the DOCTYPE. The source files are still named *.sgml, but they are actually XML files now. Renaming could be considered later. In the build system, the intermediate step to convert from SGML to XML is removed. Everything is build straight from the source files again. The OpenSP (or the old SP) package is no longer needed. The documentation toolchain instructions are updated and are much simpler now. Peter Eisentraut, Alexander Lakhin, Jürgen Purtz
2017-10-17Don't use SGML empty tagsPeter Eisentraut
For DocBook XML compatibility, don't use SGML empty tags (</>) anymore, replace by the full tag name. Add a warning option to catch future occurrences. Alexander Lakhin, Jürgen Purtz
2017-09-29Add background worker typePeter Eisentraut
Add bgw_type field to background worker structure. It is intended to be set to the same value for all workers of the same type, so they can be grouped in pg_stat_activity, for example. The backend_type column in pg_stat_activity now shows bgw_type for a background worker. The ps listing also no longer calls out that a process is a background worker but just show the bgw_type. That way, being a background worker is more of an implementation detail now that is not shown to the user. However, most log messages still refer to 'background worker "%s"'; otherwise constructing sensible and translatable log messages would become tricky. Reviewed-by: Michael Paquier <[email protected]> Reviewed-by: Daniel Gustafsson <[email protected]>
2017-04-01Don't use bgw_main even to specify in-core bgworker entrypoints.Robert Haas
On EXEC_BACKEND builds, this can fail if ASLR is in use. Backpatch to 9.5. On master, completely remove the bgw_main field completely, since there is no situation in which it is safe for an EXEC_BACKEND build. On 9.6 and 9.5, leave the field intact to avoid breaking things for third-party code that doesn't care about working under EXEC_BACKEND. Prior to 9.5, there are no in-core bgworker entrypoints. Petr Jelinek, reviewed by me. Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/[email protected]
2016-01-28Fix spi_worker mention in bgworker documentationAlvaro Herrera
The documentation mentioned contrib/ but the module was moved to src/test/modules/ by commit 22dfd116a127a of 9.5 era. Problem pointed out by Dickson Guedes in bug #13896 Backpatch-to: 9.5.
2015-11-06Document interaction of bgworkers with LISTEN/NOTIFY.Robert Haas
Thomas Munro and Robert Haas, reviewed by Haribabu Kommi
2015-11-05Pass extra data to bgworkers, and use this to fix parallel contexts.Robert Haas
Up until now, the total amount of data that could be passed to a background worker at startup was one datum, which can be a small as 4 bytes on some systems. That's enough to pass a dsm_handle or an array index, but not much else. Add a bgw_extra flag to the BackgroundWorker struct, allowing up to 128 bytes to be passed to a new worker on any platform. Use this to fix a problem I recently discovered with the parallel context machinery added in 9.5: the master assigns each worker an array index, and each worker subsequently assigns itself an array index, and there's nothing to guarantee that the two sets of indexes match, leading to chaos. Normally, I would not back-patch the change to add bgw_extra, since it is basically a feature addition. However, since 9.5 is still in beta and there seems to be no other sensible way to repair the broken parallel context machinery, back-patch to 9.5. Existing background worker code can ignore the bgw_extra field without a problem, but might need to be recompiled since the structure size has changed. Report and patch by me. Review by Amit Kapila.
2015-07-29Flesh out the background worker documentation.Robert Haas
Make it more clear that bgw_main is usually not what you want. Put the background worker flags in a variablelist rather than having them as part of a paragraph. Explain important limits on how bgw_main_arg can be used. Craig Ringer, substantially revised by me.
2015-02-02Add new function BackgroundWorkerInitializeConnectionByOid.Robert Haas
Sometimes it's useful for a background worker to be able to initialize its database connection by OID rather than by name, so provide a way to do that.
2014-10-14Fix typo in docs.Heikki Linnakangas
Shigeru Hanada
2014-07-17doc: Spell checkingPeter Eisentraut
2014-05-07When a background worker exists with code 0, unregister it.Robert Haas
The previous behavior was to restart immediately, which was generally viewed as less useful. Petr Jelinek, with some adjustments by me.
2014-02-27doc: bgw_main takes a Datum argument, not void *.Alvaro Herrera
Per report from James Harper.
2013-10-18Provide a reliable mechanism for terminating a background worker.Robert Haas
Although previously-introduced APIs allow the process that registers a background worker to obtain the worker's PID, there's no way to prevent a worker that is not currently running from being restarted. This patch introduces a new API TerminateBackgroundWorker() that prevents the background worker from being restarted, terminates it if it is currently running, and causes it to be unregistered if or when it is not running. Patch by me. Review by Michael Paquier and KaiGai Kohei.
2013-10-04doc: Add missing words to bgworker docs.Robert Haas
Maciek Sakrejda
2013-08-28Allow discovery of whether a dynamic background worker is running.Robert Haas
Using the infrastructure provided by this patch, it's possible either to wait for the startup of a dynamically-registered background worker, or to poll the status of such a worker without waiting. In either case, the current PID of the worker process can also be obtained. As usual, worker_spi is updated to demonstrate the new functionality. Patch by me. Review by Andres Freund.
2013-07-22Remove bgw_sighup and bgw_sigterm.Robert Haas
Per discussion on pgsql-hackers, these aren't really needed. Interim versions of the background worker patch had the worker starting with signals already unblocked, which would have made this necessary. But the final version does not, so we don't really need it; and it doesn't work well with the new facility for starting dynamic background workers, so just rip it out. Also per discussion on pgsql-hackers, back-patch this change to 9.3. It's best to get the API break out of the way before we do an official release of this facility, to avoid more pain for extension authors later.
2013-07-16Allow background workers to be started dynamically.Robert Haas
There is a new API, RegisterDynamicBackgroundWorker, which allows an ordinary user backend to register a new background writer during normal running. This means that it's no longer necessary for all background workers to be registered during processing of shared_preload_libraries, although the option of registering workers at that time remains available. When a background worker exits and will not be restarted, the slot previously used by that background worker is automatically released and becomes available for reuse. Slots used by background workers that are configured for automatic restart can't (yet) be released without shutting down the system. This commit adds a new source file, bgworker.c, and moves some of the existing control logic for background workers there. Previously, there was little enough logic that it made sense to keep everything in postmaster.c, but not any more. This commit also makes the worker_spi contrib module into an extension and adds a new function, worker_spi_launch, which can be used to demonstrate the new facility.
2013-07-04Add new GUC, max_worker_processes, limiting number of bgworkers.Robert Haas
In 9.3, there's no particular limit on the number of bgworkers; instead, we just count up the number that are actually registered, and use that to set MaxBackends. However, that approach causes problems for Hot Standby, which needs both MaxBackends and the size of the lock table to be the same on the standby as on the master, yet it may not be desirable to run the same bgworkers in both places. 9.3 handles that by failing to notice the problem, which will probably work fine in nearly all cases anyway, but is not theoretically sound. A further problem with simply counting the number of registered workers is that new workers can't be registered without a postmaster restart. This is inconvenient for administrators, since bouncing the postmaster causes an interruption of service. Moreover, there are a number of applications for background processes where, by necessity, the background process must be started on the fly (e.g. parallel query). While this patch doesn't actually make it possible to register new background workers after startup time, it's a necessary prerequisite. Patch by me. Review by Michael Paquier.
2013-07-04docs: Clarify flag dependencies for background workers.Robert Haas
BGWORKER_BACKEND_DATABASE_CONNECTION can only be used if BGWORKER_SHMEM_ACCESS is also used. Michael Paquier, with some tweaks by me.
2013-01-24Docs shouldn't say HOT Standby.Simon Riggs
Not an acronym. Jeff Janes
2012-12-06Background worker processesAlvaro Herrera
Background workers are postmaster subprocesses that run arbitrary user-specified code. They can request shared memory access as well as backend database connections; or they can just use plain libpq frontend database connections. Modules listed in shared_preload_libraries can register background workers in their _PG_init() function; this is early enough that it's not necessary to provide an extra GUC option, because the necessary extra resources can be allocated early on. Modules can install more than one bgworker, if necessary. Care is taken that these extra processes do not interfere with other postmaster tasks: only one such process is started on each ServerLoop iteration. This means a large number of them could be waiting to be started up and postmaster is still able to quickly service external connection requests. Also, shutdown sequence should not be impacted by a worker process that's reasonably well behaved (i.e. promptly responds to termination signals.) The current implementation lets worker processes specify their start time, i.e. at what point in the server startup process they are to be started: right after postmaster start (in which case they mustn't ask for shared memory access), when consistent state has been reached (useful during recovery in a HOT standby server), or when recovery has terminated (i.e. when normal backends are allowed). In case of a bgworker crash, actions to take depend on registration data: if shared memory was requested, then all other connections are taken down (as well as other bgworkers), just like it were a regular backend crashing. The bgworker itself is restarted, too, within a configurable timeframe (which can be configured to be never). More features to add to this framework can be imagined without much effort, and have been discussed, but this seems good enough as a useful unit already. An elementary sample module is supplied. Author: Álvaro Herrera This patch is loosely based on prior patches submitted by KaiGai Kohei, and unsubmitted code by Simon Riggs. Reviewed by: KaiGai Kohei, Markus Wanner, Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, Simon Riggs, Amit Kapila