
We are seeing occasional long lockouts from out DB. When I do a 'select * 
from pg_locks', I find that everybody is waiting for pg_listener, and that 
the lock on pg_listener is currently held by a long-running ANALYZE VERBOSE.

I saw the following in the change logs (not sure if it's relevant):

         should have gotten this notify.  But to do that, we'd have to wait
         to see if he commits or not, or make UNLISTEN hold exclusive lock
         on pg_listener until commit.  Either of these answers is
         deadlock-prone, not to mention horrible for interactive
         performance.  Do it this way for now.  (What happened to that
         project to do LISTEN/NOTIFY in memory with no table, anyway?)

Does this mean that ANALYZE will take an exclusive lock on pg_listener 
until the ANALYZE finishes? Or is there some other cause?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated...




----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 11:41:22 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> Does this mean that ANALYZE will take an exclusive lock on pg_listener 
> until the ANALYZE finishes? Or is there some other cause?

ANALYZE does not take an exclusive lock on anything.  However, the
async.c functions want AccessExclusiveLock on pg_listener, so they
quite possibly would get blocked by ANALYZE's not-so-exclusive lock.

Possibly we could reduce the strength of the lock taken by the async.c
functions ... I haven't thought hard about it.  The long-term answer is
certainly a wholesale rewrite of the listen/notify mechanism.

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 02 May 2004 22:45:21 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
Tom Lane wrote:
> Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> > Does this mean that ANALYZE will take an exclusive lock on pg_listener 
> > until the ANALYZE finishes? Or is there some other cause?
> 
> ANALYZE does not take an exclusive lock on anything.  However, the
> async.c functions want AccessExclusiveLock on pg_listener, so they
> quite possibly would get blocked by ANALYZE's not-so-exclusive lock.
> 
> Possibly we could reduce the strength of the lock taken by the async.c
> functions ... I haven't thought hard about it.  The long-term answer is
> certainly a wholesale rewrite of the listen/notify mechanism.

Gavin was working on it a while ago but I am not sure how far he got.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Sun, 2 May 2004 23:13:04 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time?
At 12:45 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>Possibly we could reduce the strength of the lock taken by the async.c
>functions

If possible, this seems like a great option. We currently have a large 
database with several hundred users who get locked out for as much as half 
an hour while ANALYZE runs.

The data in the database is extremely dynamic, so the analyze needs to be 
run regularly; we could run less often but this will just mean the problem 
happens once per week instead of once per day.

Would ACCESS SHARE be OK?


----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 13:35:18 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> If possible, this seems like a great option. We currently have a large 
> database with several hundred users who get locked out for as much as half 
> an hour while ANALYZE runs.

If it takes half an hour to ANALYZE pg_listener, I think that ANALYZE is
not your real problem :-(.  You need a much more aggressive vacuuming
policy on that table.  Maybe a cron job issuing "vacuum pg_listener"
once a minute would do?  And get the size of the table knocked down to
something less stratospheric to begin with --- perhaps stop all the
listeners while you TRUNCATE the table.

The existing listen/notify infrastructure isn't really designed for
notification rates exceeding a few events per minute ...

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 02 May 2004 23:46:09 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> Would ACCESS SHARE be OK?

Certainly not, since the point of the locks in async.c is that only one
backend should execute those routines at a time.  ExclusiveLock might
work okay ... but I still haven't thought hard about it ...

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 02 May 2004 23:56:00 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
At 01:46 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>If it takes half an hour to ANALYZE pg_listener, I think that ANALYZE is
>not your real problem :-(.  You need a much more aggressive vacuuming
>policy on that table.  Maybe a cron job issuing "vacuum pg_listener"
>once a minute would do?  And get the size of the table knocked down to
>something less stratospheric to begin with --- perhaps stop all the
>listeners while you TRUNCATE the table.

It's a general ANALYZE command for the entire DB. It's about 6GB in size, 
and is vacuumed as frequently as possible; there is certainly unreclaimed 
space, but it does not substantially outweigh used space. My *guess* is 
that the largest table is being ANALYZEd at the time (it uses most of the 
6GB), and for some reason pg_listeners is being locked in ACCESS SHARE the 
entire time.

Just vacuuming pg_listener produces:

vacuum verbose pg_listener;
INFO:  vacuuming "pg_catalog.pg_listener"
INFO:  "pg_listener": found 0 removable, 0 nonremovable row versions in 0 pages
VACUUM


----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 14:09:26 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
On Sun, 2 May 2004, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> > > Does this mean that ANALYZE will take an exclusive lock on pg_listener
> > > until the ANALYZE finishes? Or is there some other cause?
> >
> > ANALYZE does not take an exclusive lock on anything.  However, the
> > async.c functions want AccessExclusiveLock on pg_listener, so they
> > quite possibly would get blocked by ANALYZE's not-so-exclusive lock.
> >
> > Possibly we could reduce the strength of the lock taken by the async.c
> > functions ... I haven't thought hard about it.  The long-term answer is
> > certainly a wholesale rewrite of the listen/notify mechanism.
>
> Gavin was working on it a while ago but I am not sure how far he got.

Its basically written.

It is implemented using shared memory. I got stuck when I considered the
situation where we rung out of shared memory. Some emails in the archive
suggested we just fire all listeners but I didn't like that.

What I was considering was that when someone issues a NOTIFY, we reserve a
slot for the NOTIFY (plus a message, which is why I originally looked at
the problem) in shared memory. At the end of the transaction, we update a
flag to say that the transaction successed or we remove it if we've
aborted.

Does anyone else have any thoughts about it?

Gavin

Mon, 3 May 2004 14:14:18 +1000 (EST)
Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time?
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> ... for some reason pg_listeners is being locked in ACCESS SHARE the 
> entire time.

> Just vacuuming pg_listener produces:

> vacuum verbose pg_listener;
> INFO:  vacuuming "pg_catalog.pg_listener"
> INFO:  "pg_listener": found 0 removable, 0 nonremovable row versions in 0 pages
> VACUUM

[blinks...]  There's something pretty strange about that.  Are you using
LISTEN/NOTIFY at all?

			regards, tom lane

Mon, 03 May 2004 00:21:18 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
At 02:21 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>[blinks...]  There's something pretty strange about that.  Are you using
>LISTEN/NOTIFY at all?

Nope.


----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 14:22:10 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> At 02:21 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>> [blinks...]  There's something pretty strange about that.  Are you using
>> LISTEN/NOTIFY at all?

> Nope.

In that case there's no reason for anything to be taking any particular
locks on pg_listener; and it's simply not possible for ANALYZE to spend
half an hour on a zero-page table if it's not blocked by a lock.  Could
you dig a little deeper and see where the problem really is?

			regards, tom lane

Mon, 03 May 2004 00:33:26 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
At 02:33 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>Could
>you dig a little deeper and see where the problem really is?

I thought I had 8-(.

The result of a 'select * from pg_locks where not granted' was a bunch of 
locks on the pg_listener relation, and no others. Only one process had a 
lock on that relation, and it was an ANALYZE command. If there is something 
else to look for next time it happens, please let me know.


>

----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 14:43:14 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
> At 02:33 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Could you dig a little deeper and see where the problem really is?

> I thought I had 8-(.

> The result of a 'select * from pg_locks where not granted' was a bunch of 
> locks on the pg_listener relation, and no others. Only one process had a 
> lock on that relation, and it was an ANALYZE command.

I don't believe any of this.  In the first place, if you're not using
LISTEN/NOTIFY then there's no reason for any backend to try to take out
an AccessExclusive lock on pg_listener (which is the only kind that would
be blocked by ANALYZE's measly AccessShareLock).  In the second place,
an ANALYZE on a zero-page relation cannot conceivably take half an hour,
unless it's in turn being blocked by something else.

Please dig deeper.

			regards, tom lane

Mon, 03 May 2004 00:54:22 -0400
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time? 
At 02:54 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>I don't believe any of this.

mail=# select * from pg_locks where not granted;
  relation | database | transaction |  pid  |        mode         | granted
----------+----------+-------------+-------+---------------------+---------
     16414 |    17149 |             |  7847 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51015 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51149 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51024 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 48838 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 57670 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 54535 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 57756 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 25894 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 55813 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 18181 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 57846 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 44827 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 52352 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51239 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 14610 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 88549 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 36939 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 57120 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 89107 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 48915 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 74102 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51029 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 51100 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 57865 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 45777 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 22288 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 52006 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 44829 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 49073 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 52827 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 21003 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
     16414 |    17149 |             | 50204 | AccessExclusiveLock | f
mail=# select * from pg_class where oid=16414;
    relname   | relnamespace | reltype | relowner | relam | relfilenode | 
relpages | reltuples | reltoastrelid | reltoastidxid | relh
asindex | relisshared | relkind | relnatts | relchecks | reltriggers | 
relukeys | relfkeys | relrefs | relhasoids | relhaspkey | rel
hasrules | relhassubclass |   relacl
-------------+--------------+---------+----------+-------+-------------+----------+-----------+---------------+---------------+-----
--------+-------------+---------+----------+-----------+-------------+----------+----------+---------+------------+------------+----
---------+----------------+------------
  pg_listener |           11 |   16415 |        1 |     0 |       16414 
|        0 |         0 |             0 |             0 | f
         | f           | r       |        3 |         0 |           0 
|        0 |        0 |       0 | f          | f          | f
          | f              | {=r/pgsql}
(1 row)

mail=# select * from pg_locks where granted and relation=16414;
  relation | database | transaction |  pid  |      mode       | granted
----------+----------+-------------+-------+-----------------+---------
     16414 |    17149 |             | 56399 | AccessShareLock | t
(1 row)

mail=# \q
[~] root@beast>ps ax | grep 56399;
56399  ??  D      0:03.41 postmaster: pgsql mail 127.0.0.1 ANALYZE (postgres)
[~] root@beast>kill -TERM 56399
[~] root@beast>ps ax | grep 56399;
[~] root@beast>psql -p5443 -U pgsql mail
Welcome to psql 7.3.3, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
        \h for help with SQL commands
        \? for help on internal slash commands
        \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
        \q to quit

mail=# select * from pg_locks where granted and relation=16414;
  relation | database | transaction | pid | mode | granted
----------+----------+-------------+-----+------+---------
(0 rows)

mail=# select * from pg_locks where not granted;
  relation | database | transaction |  pid  |   mode    | granted
----------+----------+-------------+-------+-----------+---------
           |          |    65738548 | 72279 | ShareLock | f
           |          |    65738548 | 40479 | ShareLock | f
           |          |    65738548 | 46830 | ShareLock | f
           |          |    65738478 | 20762 | ShareLock | f
(4 rows)

mail=# select * from pg_locks where not granted;
  relation | database | transaction | pid | mode | granted
----------+----------+-------------+-----+------+---------
(0 rows)



----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 15:05:23 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
At 02:54 PM 3/05/2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>Please dig deeper.

I will log everything I check next time; unfortunately, when it happens, 
the priority is on unlocking everything so I have a limited time to play. 
So far, killing the ANALYZE has fixed the problem each time.


----------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Warner                    |     __---_____
Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd.   |----/       -  \
(A.B.N. 75 008 659 498)          |          /(@)   ______---_
Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81         |                 _________  \
Fax: (+61) 03 5330 3172          |                 ___________ |
Http://www.rhyme.com.au          |                /           \|
                                  |    --________--
PGP key available upon request,  |  /
and from pgp.mit.edu:11371       |/ 


Mon, 03 May 2004 15:12:12 +1000
Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long
On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 02:14:18PM +1000, Gavin Sherry wrote:

> It is implemented using shared memory. I got stuck when I considered the
> situation where we rung out of shared memory. Some emails in the archive
> suggested we just fire all listeners but I didn't like that.

Can this be kept in backend local memory and then sent to the other
backends at transaction commit?  If you run out of local memory you can
just spill to disk.  (With shared memory this seems pretty hard to do.)

I'm not sure how would one "send to the other backends."  Maybe write
another file on disk, one for each remote backend?  Surely this can be
done somehow.  I've heard that on linux-2.6 they are implementing "POSIX
message queues" (not sure what those are anyway); maybe we can do that
on platforms that support it, for performance.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"In a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster
to have kids running around loose." (Paul Graham)

Mon, 3 May 2004 09:59:45 -0400
Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time?
On Mon, 3 May 2004, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 02:14:18PM +1000, Gavin Sherry wrote:
>
> > It is implemented using shared memory. I got stuck when I considered the
> > situation where we rung out of shared memory. Some emails in the archive
> > suggested we just fire all listeners but I didn't like that.
>
> Can this be kept in backend local memory and then sent to the other
> backends at transaction commit?  If you run out of local memory you can
> just spill to disk.  (With shared memory this seems pretty hard to do.)
>
> I'm not sure how would one "send to the other backends."  Maybe write
> another file on disk, one for each remote backend?  Surely this can be
> done somehow.  I've heard that on linux-2.6 they are implementing "POSIX
> message queues" (not sure what those are anyway); maybe we can do that
> on platforms that support it, for performance.

What happens in the (unlikely) event that we never find space in shared
memory? That's the problem that I am currently trying to solve.

We currently just fire all the triggers but is that a great idea?
Particularly if we support the passing of a message with a notify.

Gavin

Tue, 4 May 2004 00:30:57 +1000 (EST)
Gavin Sherry <swm@linuxworld.com.au>
Re: ANALYZE locks pg_listener in EXCLUSIVE for long time?