If vacuum fails to remove a tuple with xmax older than
VacuumCutoffs->OldestXmin and younger than GlobalVisState->maybe_needed,
it may attempt to freeze the tuple's xmax and then ERROR out in
pre-freeze checks with "cannot freeze committed xmax".
Fix this by having vacuum always remove tuples older than OldestXmin.
It is possible for GlobalVisState->maybe_needed to precede OldestXmin if
maybe_needed is forced to go backward while vacuum is running. This can
happen if a disconnected standby with a running transaction older than
VacuumCutoffs->OldestXmin reconnects to the primary after vacuum
initially calculates GlobalVisState and OldestXmin.
In back branches starting with 14, the first version using
GlobalVisState, failing to remove tuples older than OldestXmin during
pruning caused vacuum to infinitely loop in lazy_scan_prune(), as
investigated on this [1] thread. After 1ccc1e05ae removed the retry loop
in lazy_scan_prune() and stopped comparing tuples to OldestXmin, the
hang could no longer happen, but we could still attempt to freeze dead
tuples with xmax older than OldestXmin -- resulting in an ERROR.
Fix this by always removing dead tuples with xmax older than
VacuumCutoffs->OldestXmin. This is okay because the standby won't replay
the tuple removal until the tuple is removable. Thus, the worst that can
happen is a recovery conflict.
[1] https://postgr.es/m/20240415173913.4zyyrwaftujxthf2%40awork3.anarazel.de#1b216b7768b5bd577a3d3d51bd5aadee
Back-patch through 14
Author: Melanie Plageman
Reviewed-by: Peter Geoghegan, Robert Haas, Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, and Noah Misch
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAAKRu_bDD7oq9ZwB2OJqub5BovMG6UjEYsoK2LVttadjEqyRGg%40mail.gmail.com
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