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Fix zero feedback intervals and swallowed status update failures by Brar · Pull Request #6719 · npgsql/npgsql · GitHub
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Fix zero feedback intervals and swallowed status update failures - #6719

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Brar:repl/feedback-fixes
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Brar wants to merge 6 commits into
npgsql:mainfrom
Brar:repl/feedback-fixes

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@Brar

@Brar Brar commented Oct 25, 2026 •

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Depends on #6689, #6690, #6709, #6715 and #6716, which aren't merged yet; their commits show up here until they are.

  • A WalReceiverStatusInterval or WalReceiverTimeout of zero made the feedback timers fire over and over, which flooded the server with status updates (for the timeout with reply requests, which the server answered every time). Like wal_receiver_status_interval and wal_receiver_timeout in PostgreSQL, zero now disables them, and so do intervals longer than a timer supports (about 49 days), which failed once the server had switched to copy mode. Positive intervals below a millisecond fire every millisecond. Waiting for the end of START_REPLICATION after CopyDone is bounded for such long timeouts too.
  • Negative values other than Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan are now rejected by the setters. Before, starting replication failed with them once the server had switched to copy mode, which left the connection unusable.
  • SendStatusUpdate logged write failures without reporting them, so callers that push their flush position (e.g. for synchronous replication) couldn't tell that it never reached the server. It now throws them; like any failed write, they break the connection. A status update that waited for one that broke the connection fails with InvalidOperationException instead of a NullReferenceException, and so does one after the stream ended. The reply to a keepalive also reports its failure, through the stream, instead of a NullReferenceException at the next read.
  • A log message gets its missing space ("SendStatusUpdatewas called").

How a real server gets there

On PostgreSQL 18.6 and 14.24, main against this PR:

  • Zero intervals: a user sets WalReceiverStatusInterval or WalReceiverTimeout to TimeSpan.Zero to switch it off, which is what 0 means for PostgreSQL's own settings; no server setting is involved. With a zero status interval, the walsender logged 100,556 status updates in 2 s. With a zero timeout, the client sent about 69,000 reply-requesting updates per second while the consumer held a message, and 224,473 keepalives came back during 1 s of reading. With this PR there were none.
  • Negative and too-long intervals: e.g. -1 s from a configuration in which -1 means "off", as for several PostgreSQL settings, or TimeSpan.MaxValue as .NET's "infinite". On main the first MoveNextAsync threw ArgumentOutOfRangeException from the Timer constructor after the server had entered copy mode, the next IDENTIFY_SYSTEM failed with "Received backend message CopyData while expecting RowDescriptionMessage", and the server logged FATAL "invalid standby message type". With this PR the setter throws for -1 s, and with TimeSpan.MaxValue the timer is off, and streaming and IDENTIFY_SYSTEM work.
  • A failed SendStatusUpdate: the server closes the connection while the consumer holds a message, e.g. because wal_sender_timeout passed without a message from the client, which can happen with a busy consumer when it is shorter than WalReceiverStatusInterval (CI uses 3 s; Npgsql's default interval is 10 s), or through pg_terminate_backend, a shutdown or a network failure. The consumer then pushes its position with SetReplicationStatus and SendStatusUpdate. Main returned normally and only logged the failure (event 50103); this PR throws NpgsqlException with the IOException inside.
  • An update that waited for a failing one: two status updates are in flight when the connection dies, e.g. SendStatusUpdate from two threads, or together with Npgsql's keepalive reply or timers. Forced with a suspended walsender, so that the first write blocked and the second update waited: main returned normally from both calls and only logged an IOException and a NullReferenceException; with this PR the first call threw the write failure and the second InvalidOperationException. Without forcing, the window is the duration of one failing write.
  • A keepalive reply that can't be written: the consumer holds a message while the server's reply request sits in the buffer behind it, and then the walsender goes away. When the consumer resumes, Npgsql answers the request, and the write fails. Main logged the failure, and the next MoveNextAsync threw NullReferenceException; this PR throws NpgsqlException with the IOException inside, and the connection is broken.

Tests

ReplicationFeedbackMockTests (8 cases, mock): all of them fail on #6716's code. #6630's live test SendStatusUpdate_racing_replication_teardown_throws_InvalidOperationException passes on top of this PR.

For the reviewer

  • No public API change. Behavior changes, also in the 11.0 release notes: zero disables the interval and the timeout, negative values throw ArgumentOutOfRangeException, and SendStatusUpdate throws write failures.
  • This builds on Fix teardown NRE/ODE in ReplicationConnection's SendStatusUpdate #6630 (Hawxy's fix of SendStatusUpdate racing the end of a stream); SendFeedback's new throwOnFailure replaces its OperationCanceledException catch.
  • The handling of zero and negative intervals is meant to go to the hotfix branches once this is merged.

Dependencies and merge order

Fixes #6698

Brar and others added 6 commits October 25, 2026 17:02
PgServerMock can now play a walsender: CopyBothResponse, CopyData,
XLogData and keepalive messages, CopyDone, CopyOutResponse and
NoticeResponse writers, NULL DataRow columns, a configurable
server_version, the parsed startup parameters (e.g. "replication") and
Expect helpers for CopyDone, Terminate and standby status updates.

This also fixes length bugs that were hidden because the client parses
these messages by content (CopyInResponse, ParameterDescription and
ErrorResponse sent wrong lengths), and ExpectMessage skipped
synchronously without ensuring the message was fully received.

ReplicationMock opens replication connections against the mock with the
feedback timers disabled, and ReplicationMockTests smoke-tests startup,
IDENTIFY_SYSTEM, physical streaming, keepalive replies and cancellation,
with timeouts on both the client and the mock side.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
…ections

- TimelineHistory threw an InvalidCastException on PostgreSQL 14 and
  later, which declare the content column as text instead of bytea. The
  column carries the raw bytes of the history file either way, so it is
  now read as raw bytes. That also stops bytea unescaping from mangling
  backslashes in the content on older servers, and leaves the bytea
  parsing without a use, so it is removed.
- Show("all") returns many rows, which made the command helper expect
  CommandComplete, get another DataRow and break the connection. Further
  rows are now skipped, and Show throws NotSupportedException for results
  that aren't a single value, leaving the connection usable.
- The ReplicationConnection.CommandTimeout property was ignored for
  replication commands, since every command reset the timeouts to the
  connection string's command timeout. It now applies to all commands,
  and setting it before Open no longer throws. Timeouts that don't fit
  into an int of milliseconds (e.g. TimeSpan.MaxValue) mean no timeout.
- StartReplication(PhysicalReplicationSlot, CancellationToken) throws
  ArgumentNullException for a null slot instead of a
  NullReferenceException.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
PgTestCluster creates PostgreSQL clusters in temporary directories with
the binaries that NPGSQL_TEST_PG_BIN points to (initdb, pg_ctl,
pg_basebackup): a primary that allows physical and logical replication,
streaming standbys of it, promotion and shutdown in any mode. This
covers tests that can't run against the shared test server, like
timeline switches and server shutdowns. Tests using it are ignored when
the variable isn't set, so CI is unaffected.

The clusters listen on 127.0.0.1 only (no Unix sockets, whose default
directory isn't writable for unprivileged users on Debian-based
builds), pick a free port right before each start, retry when another
process took it, and limit every step to well below CI's 30 seconds per
test.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- At the end of a historic timeline (e.g. after the standby we stream
  from got promoted), the server ends copy mode with CopyDone. Npgsql
  expected only CopyData and broke the connection ("Received backend
  message CopyDone while expecting CopyDataMessage"). It now answers
  with CopyDone, reads the next timeline the server sends, both
  CommandCompletes and ReadyForQuery, and ends the enumeration normally,
  leaving the connection usable. Status updates stop before our
  CopyDone, since the protocol doesn't allow CopyData after it. The next
  timeline is logged, and the StartReplication docs explain how to
  continue: IDENTIFY_SYSTEM returns the current timeline and
  TIMELINE_HISTORY the position where it branched off, which can be
  before the end of the WAL received on the old timeline.
- Asked to start at the end of a historic timeline, the server doesn't
  enter copy mode but sends the next timeline right away, which Npgsql
  treated as an unexpected message. The enumeration now ends right away.
- A walsender that exits after everything has been replicated (e.g. at
  server shutdown, npgsql#5752) sends CommandComplete, which also broke the
  connection with a misleading error. It now throws an NpgsqlException
  saying that the server ended the replication stream.
- In logical replication, unknown CopyData message types are skipped
  instead of breaking the connection, like the logical replication
  worker, which ignores them on purpose. Physical replication keeps
  rejecting them, like walreceiver, since it must not lose WAL.
  Keepalive fields that newer servers may add are skipped in both.
- In physical replication, the received position reported to the server
  was the server's own WAL end, not the end of the WAL received, so
  pg_stat_replication.write_lsn and synchronous_commit = remote_write
  treated WAL as written before it arrived. It is now the end of the
  data the consumer is done with, like walreceiver reports what it
  wrote.
- LastReceivedLsn starts over at the start position of each stream
  instead of keeping the maximum of all previous streams, which was
  wrong when continuing on a new timeline at a lower position.
- The XLogData stream is disposed after each message instead of later in
  cleanup, where it could skip data based on a stale position: a server
  error that ended the stream after a keepalive (e.g. after
  pg_cancel_backend) turned into a timeout and a broken connection.

The new cluster tests stream physically across a standby's promotion
and through a fast shutdown, using the throwaway clusters from
NPGSQL_TEST_PG_BIN.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Breaking out of a replication enumeration, or an exception in the
  consumer, left the inner enumerator undisposed. The connection stayed
  in replication mode with its feedback timers running, and every other
  command failed with NpgsqlOperationInProgressException. The
  enumerators are now disposed, which stops streaming: physical
  replication ends copy mode with CopyDone, which keeps the walsender
  ready for the next START_REPLICATION and keeps temporary slots;
  logical replication cancels the command, since a logical walsender
  can't stream again after CopyDone. Like any error, the cancellation
  drops the temporary slots of the session (documented on the logical
  StartReplication methods). Servers before PostgreSQL 10 ignore
  cancellation requests on replication connections, so with them the
  logical stop breaks the connection instead.
  A final status update reports the processed position first; for
  logical replication this is best effort, since the walsender may
  handle the cancellation before it reads the update. If stopping fails,
  the connection is broken; the exception that made the consumer stop is
  never replaced. On PostgreSQL 14-17, the server may not send
  pgoutput's Relation messages again in the next stream on the same
  connection after such a cancellation (on 14 after any error, on 15-17
  if the connection created the slot with an exported snapshot; fixed in
  PostgreSQL 18 by 80b727eb9de). This is documented on the pgoutput
  StartReplication, and the test avoids it.
- Status updates that were still on their way when a stream ended (e.g.
  from a timer or another thread) could be written after the end of the
  command, interleaved with the next one. They are now dropped.
- Whatever the consumer didn't read of the message it held is skipped
  first, also when a plugin like pgoutput reads the data directly from
  the buffer. Reading beyond the end of a message breaks the connection.
- After cancellation, messages that were already on their way were still
  handed out until the server's error arrived. They are now skipped.
  This makes the physical replication tests reliable, so they run again
  (some of them also used colliding slot names).
- Starting a second stream while one was in progress overwrote the state
  of the first one before failing, so disposing the connection didn't
  stop the first stream anymore. It now fails before touching anything,
  and a start that fails leaves no state behind.
- A message bigger than the read buffer (e.g. a long notice) made the
  connector switch to a bigger buffer while the stream kept reading from
  the old one. This is fixed for the replication stream itself; the
  pgoutput decoder still reads from the old buffer.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- A WalReceiverStatusInterval or WalReceiverTimeout of zero made the
  feedback timers fire over and over, which flooded the server with
  status updates (in the case of the timeout with reply requests, which
  the server answered every time). Like wal_receiver_status_interval and
  wal_receiver_timeout in PostgreSQL, zero now disables them, and so do
  intervals longer than a timer supports (~49 days), which failed once
  the server had switched to copy mode. Positive intervals below a
  millisecond fire every millisecond. Waiting for the end of
  START_REPLICATION after CopyDone is bounded for such long timeouts too.
- Negative values other than Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan are now rejected by
  the setters. Before, starting replication failed with them once the
  server had switched to copy mode, which left the connection unusable.
- SendStatusUpdate logged write failures without reporting them, so
  callers that push their flush position (e.g. for synchronous
  replication) couldn't tell that it never reached the server. It now
  throws them; like any failed write, they break the connection. A
  status update that waited for one that broke the connection fails with
  InvalidOperationException instead of a NullReferenceException, and so
  does one after the stream ended. The reply to a keepalive also reports
  its failure, through the stream, instead of a NullReferenceException at
  the next read.
- Add a missing space to a log message.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

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Replication feedback: a zero interval floods the server, invalid intervals break the stream, SendStatusUpdate hides write failures

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