ab6657ea13
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.
PostgreSQL Database Management System ===================================== This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL database management system. PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions. This distribution also contains C language bindings. PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here: http://www.postgresql.org/download See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install PostgreSQL. That file also lists supported operating systems and hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL system. Changes between all PostgreSQL releases are recorded in the file HISTORY. Copyright and license information can be found in the file COPYRIGHT. A comprehensive documentation set is included in this distribution; it can be read as described in the installation instructions. The latest version of this software may be obtained at http://www.postgresql.org/download/. For more information look at our web site located at http://www.postgresql.org/.