Make checkpoint requests more robust.

Commit 6f6a6d8 introduced a delay of up to 2 seconds if we're trying
to request a checkpoint but the checkpointer hasn't started yet (or,
much less likely, our kill() call fails).  However buildfarm experience
shows that that's not quite enough for slow or heavily-loaded machines.
There's no good reason to assume that the checkpointer won't start
eventually, so we may as well make the timeout much longer, say 60 sec.

However, if the caller didn't say CHECKPOINT_WAIT, it seems like a bad
idea to be waiting at all, much less for as long as 60 sec.  We can
remove the need for that, and make this whole thing more robust, by
adjusting the code so that the existence of a pending checkpoint
request is clear from the contents of shared memory, and making sure
that the checkpointer process will notice it at startup even if it did
not get a signal.  In this way there's no need for a non-CHECKPOINT_WAIT
call to wait at all; if it can't send the signal, it can nonetheless
assume that the checkpointer will eventually service the request.

A potential downside of this change is that "kill -INT" on the checkpointer
process is no longer enough to trigger a checkpoint, should anyone be
relying on something so hacky.  But there's no obvious reason to do it
like that rather than issuing a plain old CHECKPOINT command, so we'll
assume that nobody is.  There doesn't seem to be a way to preserve this
undocumented quasi-feature without introducing race conditions.

Since a principal reason for messing with this is to prevent intermittent
buildfarm failures, back-patch to all supported branches.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/[email protected]

Author: tglsfdc

src/backend/postmaster/checkpointer.c

@@ -153,7 +153,6 @@ double		CheckPointCompletionTarget = 0.5;
  * Flags set by interrupt handlers for later service in the main loop.
  */
 static volatile sig_atomic_t got_SIGHUP = false;
-static volatile sig_atomic_t checkpoint_requested = false;
 static volatile sig_atomic_t shutdown_requested = false;
 
 /*
@@ -370,12 +369,6 @@ CheckpointerMain(void)
 			 */
 			UpdateSharedMemoryConfig();
 		}
-		if (checkpoint_requested)
-		{
-			checkpoint_requested = false;
-			do_checkpoint = true;
-			BgWriterStats.m_requested_checkpoints++;
-		}
 		if (shutdown_requested)
 		{
 			/*
@@ -389,6 +382,17 @@ CheckpointerMain(void)
 			proc_exit(0);		/* done */
 		}
 
+		/*
+		 * Detect a pending checkpoint request by checking whether the flags
+		 * word in shared memory is nonzero.  We shouldn't need to acquire the
+		 * ckpt_lck for this.
+		 */
+		if (((volatile CheckpointerShmemStruct *) CheckpointerShmem)->ckpt_flags)
+		{
+			do_checkpoint = true;
+			BgWriterStats.m_requested_checkpoints++;
+		}
+
 		/*
 		 * Force a checkpoint if too much time has elapsed since the last one.
 		 * Note that we count a timed checkpoint in stats only when this
@@ -630,17 +634,14 @@ CheckArchiveTimeout(void)
 static bool
 ImmediateCheckpointRequested(void)
 {
-	if (checkpoint_requested)
-	{
-		volatile CheckpointerShmemStruct *cps = CheckpointerShmem;
+	volatile CheckpointerShmemStruct *cps = CheckpointerShmem;
 
-		/*
-		 * We don't need to acquire the ckpt_lck in this case because we're
-		 * only looking at a single flag bit.
-		 */
-		if (cps->ckpt_flags & CHECKPOINT_IMMEDIATE)
-			return true;
-	}
+	/*
+	 * We don't need to acquire the ckpt_lck in this case because we're only
+	 * looking at a single flag bit.
+	 */
+	if (cps->ckpt_flags & CHECKPOINT_IMMEDIATE)
+		return true;
 	return false;
 }
 
@@ -843,7 +844,10 @@ ReqCheckpointHandler(SIGNAL_ARGS)
 {
 	int			save_errno = errno;
 
-	checkpoint_requested = true;
+	/*
+	 * The signalling process should have set ckpt_flags nonzero, so all we
+	 * need do is ensure that our main loop gets kicked out of any wait.
+	 */
 	SetLatch(MyLatch);
 
 	errno = save_errno;
@@ -984,31 +988,35 @@ RequestCheckpoint(int flags)
 
 	old_failed = CheckpointerShmem->ckpt_failed;
 	old_started = CheckpointerShmem->ckpt_started;
-	CheckpointerShmem->ckpt_flags |= flags;
+	CheckpointerShmem->ckpt_flags |= (flags | CHECKPOINT_REQUESTED);
 
 	SpinLockRelease(&CheckpointerShmem->ckpt_lck);
 
 	/*
 	 * Send signal to request checkpoint.  It's possible that the checkpointer
 	 * hasn't started yet, or is in process of restarting, so we will retry a
-	 * few times if needed.  Also, if not told to wait for the checkpoint to
-	 * occur, we consider failure to send the signal to be nonfatal and merely
-	 * LOG it.
+	 * few times if needed.  (Actually, more than a few times, since on slow
+	 * or overloaded buildfarm machines, it's been observed that the
+	 * checkpointer can take several seconds to start.)  However, if not told
+	 * to wait for the checkpoint to occur, we consider failure to send the
+	 * signal to be nonfatal and merely LOG it.  The checkpointer should see
+	 * the request when it does start, with or without getting a signal.
 	 */
+#define MAX_SIGNAL_TRIES 600	/* max wait 60.0 sec */
 	for (ntries = 0;; ntries++)
 	{
 		if (CheckpointerShmem->checkpointer_pid == 0)
 		{
-			if (ntries >= 20)	/* max wait 2.0 sec */
+			if (ntries >= MAX_SIGNAL_TRIES || !(flags & CHECKPOINT_WAIT))
 			{
 				elog((flags & CHECKPOINT_WAIT) ? ERROR : LOG,
-					 "could not request checkpoint because checkpointer not running");
+					 "could not signal for checkpoint: checkpointer is not running");
 				break;
 			}
 		}
 		else if (kill(CheckpointerShmem->checkpointer_pid, SIGINT) != 0)
 		{
-			if (ntries >= 20)	/* max wait 2.0 sec */
+			if (ntries >= MAX_SIGNAL_TRIES || !(flags & CHECKPOINT_WAIT))
 			{
 				elog((flags & CHECKPOINT_WAIT) ? ERROR : LOG,
 					 "could not signal for checkpoint: %m");

src/include/access/xlog.h

@@ -215,9 +215,10 @@ extern bool XLOG_DEBUG;
 										 * belonging to unlogged tables */
 /* These are important to RequestCheckpoint */
 #define CHECKPOINT_WAIT			0x0020	/* Wait for completion */
+#define CHECKPOINT_REQUESTED	0x0040	/* Checkpoint request has been made */
 /* These indicate the cause of a checkpoint request */
-#define CHECKPOINT_CAUSE_XLOG	0x0040	/* XLOG consumption */
-#define CHECKPOINT_CAUSE_TIME	0x0080	/* Elapsed time */
+#define CHECKPOINT_CAUSE_XLOG	0x0080	/* XLOG consumption */
+#define CHECKPOINT_CAUSE_TIME	0x0100	/* Elapsed time */
 
 /*
  * Flag bits for the record being inserted, set using XLogSetRecordFlags().