PostgreSQL: Repack Data Loss Fix and Test Stability
Two backpatched reliability fixes lead the day — a repack change preventing silent loss of large values and a parallel autovacuum crash fix. Recovery tests get faster and less flaky, with smaller cleanups for extensions and portability.
Duration: PT2M45S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from PostgreSQL.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: PostgreSQL
- Published: 2026-09-29T13:06:27Z
- Audio duration: PT2M45S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Good morning, it's Tuesday, September 29th, 2026, and this is your PostgreSQL briefing.
The headline is safety under concurrency, with two fixes that prevent lost updates and worker crashes during routine maintenance.
First, concurrent repack. Commit 1813f95 locks the toast table early, before the background decoding worker starts. Previously the worker recorded the toast storage identifier at startup but the table wasn't locked until the data copy. If a vacuum full rewrote that storage in between, concurrent updates to large…
Second, parallel autovacuum. Commit cc053b6 fixes a crash when no dynamic shared memory segment can be created. In that case a parallel context could exist with zero workers and a null segment pointer, and registering a detach callback on it brought down the worker. The fix only sets up shared cost parameters and…
The second theme is faster, less flaky recovery tests. Two commits from Daniel Gustafsson tighten the checksum and rewind suites. One switches idle waits to explicitly wait for flushed write-ahead log that is actually available for streaming, and switches log activity on the source before starting the target to…
Finally, small extensibility cleanups.…
Nearby episodes from PostgreSQL
- Replication Race, Lock Timing, and Log Cleanup
- Weekly Recap - Hardening Privileges and Edge-Case Reliability
- pg_dump Tar Restore Fix
- Privilege Fixes and Stats Restore Repairs
- Repack, Vacuum and Replication Hardening
- Snapshot and Visibility Map Correctness
- Concurrency Race Fixes and Replay Relief
- Upgrade Check and Error Code Cleanup