
After pg_upgrade, it is possible that some tuples' Xmax have multixacts corresponding to the old installation; such multixacts cannot have running members anymore. In many code sites we already know not to read them and clobber them silently, but at least when VACUUM tries to freeze a multixact or determine whether one needs freezing, there's an attempt to resolve it to its member transactions by calling GetMultiXactIdMembers, and if the multixact value is "in the future" with regards to the current valid multixact range, an error like this is raised: ERROR: MultiXactId 123 has not been created yet -- apparent wraparound and vacuuming fails. Per discussion with Andrew Gierth, it is completely bogus to try to resolve multixacts coming from before a pg_upgrade, regardless of where they stand with regards to the current valid multixact range. It's possible to get from under this problem by doing SELECT FOR UPDATE of the problem tuples, but if tables are large, this is slow and tedious, so a more thorough solution is desirable. To fix, we realize that multixacts in xmax created in 9.2 and previous have a specific bit pattern that is never used in 9.3 and later (we already knew this, per comments and infomask tests sprinkled in various places, but we weren't leveraging this knowledge appropriately). Whenever the infomask of the tuple matches that bit pattern, we just ignore the multixact completely as if Xmax wasn't set; or, in the case of tuple freezing, we act as if an unwanted value is set and clobber it without decoding. This guarantees that no errors will be raised, and that the values will be progressively removed until all tables are clean. Most callers of GetMultiXactIdMembers are patched to recognize directly that the value is a removable "empty" multixact and avoid calling GetMultiXactIdMembers altogether. To avoid changing the signature of GetMultiXactIdMembers() in back branches, we keep the "allow_old" boolean flag but rename it to "from_pgupgrade"; if the flag is true, we always return an empty set instead of looking up the multixact. (I suppose we could remove the argument in the master branch, but I chose not to do so in this commit). This was broken all along, but the error-facing message appeared first because of commit 8e9a16ab8f7f and was partially fixed in a25c2b7c4db3. This fix, backpatched all the way back to 9.3, goes approximately in the same direction as a25c2b7c4db3 but should cover all cases. Bug analysis by Andrew Gierth and Álvaro Herrera. A number of public reports match this bug: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20140330040029.GY4582@tamriel.snowman.net https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/538F3D70.6080902@publicrelay.com https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/556439CF.7070109@pscs.co.uk https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/SG2PR06MB0760098A111C88E31BD4D96FB3540@SG2PR06MB0760.apcprd06.prod.outlook.com https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20160615203829.5798.4594@wrigleys.postgresql.org
The PostgreSQL contrib tree --------------------------- This subtree contains porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their usefulness. User documentation for each module appears in the main SGML documentation. When building from the source distribution, these modules are not built automatically, unless you build the "world" target. You can also build and install them all by running "make all" and "make install" in this directory; or to build and install just one selected module, do the same in that module's subdirectory. Some directories supply new user-defined functions, operators, or types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database system by executing a CREATE EXTENSION command. In a fresh database, you can simply do CREATE EXTENSION module_name; See the PostgreSQL documentation for more information about this procedure.