Avoid potential deadlock in InitCatCachePhase2().

Opening a catcache's index could require reading from that cache's own
catalog, which of course would acquire AccessShareLock on the catalog.
So the original coding here risks locking index before heap, which could
deadlock against another backend trying to get exclusive locks in the
normal order.  Because InitCatCachePhase2 is only called when a backend
has to start up without a relcache init file, the deadlock was seldom seen
in the field.  (And by the same token, there's no need to worry about any
performance disadvantage; so not much point in trying to distinguish
exactly which catalogs have the risk.)

Bug report, diagnosis, and patch by Nikhil Sontakke.  Additional commentary
by me.  Back-patch to all supported branches.

diff --git a/src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c b/src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c
index a86581162836ea89917c5e73612f18a9a67ce5fb..0b27bc034c009ba6df523dc8f94ac16e74f5288a 100644 (file)
--- a/src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c
+++ b/src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
 #ifdef CATCACHE_STATS
 #include "storage/ipc.h"               /* for on_proc_exit */
 #endif
+#include "storage/lmgr.h"
 #include "utils/builtins.h"
 #include "utils/fmgroids.h"
 #include "utils/memutils.h"
@@ -1009,8 +1010,16 @@ InitCatCachePhase2(CatCache *cache, bool touch_index)
        {
                Relation        idesc;
 
+               /*
+                * We must lock the underlying catalog before opening the index to
+                * avoid deadlock, since index_open could possibly result in reading
+                * this same catalog, and if anyone else is exclusive-locking this
+                * catalog and index they'll be doing it in that order.
+                */
+               LockRelationOid(cache->cc_reloid, AccessShareLock);
                idesc = index_open(cache->cc_indexoid, AccessShareLock);
                index_close(idesc, AccessShareLock);
+               UnlockRelationOid(cache->cc_reloid, AccessShareLock);
        }
 }
 

diff --git a/src/backend/utils/cache/relcache.c b/src/backend/utils/cache/relcache.c
index f6853899b3cb3768a5924c38b70f8dfe7a92cf5e..59648a5ddec2ab3ef83456344be24336e7a37320 100644 (file)
--- a/src/backend/utils/cache/relcache.c
+++ b/src/backend/utils/cache/relcache.c
@@ -1541,6 +1541,12 @@ RelationClose(Relation relation)
  *     We assume that at the time we are called, we have at least AccessShareLock
  *     on the target index.  (Note: in the calls from RelationClearRelation,
  *     this is legitimate because we know the rel has positive refcount.)
+ *
+ *     If the target index is an index on pg_class or pg_index, we'd better have
+ *     previously gotten at least AccessShareLock on its underlying catalog,
+ *     else we are at risk of deadlock against someone trying to exclusive-lock
+ *     the heap and index in that order.  This is ensured in current usage by
+ *     only applying this to indexes being opened or having positive refcount.
  */
 static void
 RelationReloadClassinfo(Relation relation)