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Report why the connection broke while a replication message was held - #6720

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Brar:repl/timer-failure-reason
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Brar wants to merge 7 commits into
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Brar:repl/timer-failure-reason

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@Brar Brar commented Oct 25, 2026

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Depends on #6689, #6690, #6709, #6715, #6716 and #6719, which aren't merged yet; their commits show up here until they are.

When a status update of a feedback timer failed, the timer only logged the failure (event 50103), and breaking the connection disposed its buffers. If the consumer held a message at that time, its next MoveNextAsync failed with a NullReferenceException: when reading the next message, or, for plugins like pgoutput that read from the buffer directly, when skipping the rest of the held message. Any other failure that broke the connection while the consumer held a message, e.g. a SendStatusUpdate that failed, had the same effect.

The stream now checks the connection when the consumer asks for the next message. If it broke, it throws an NpgsqlException with the exception that broke it as the inner exception, with the message that NpgsqlConnector.StartUserAction uses for a broken connection when keepalive is enabled ("The connection was previously broken because of the following exception"). NpgsqlConnector gets an internal BreakReason accessor for this.

Not covered: pgoutput's Insert, Update and Delete messages whose values weren't read to the end still fail with a misleading exception in this case, since pgoutput consumes the rest of the row before it asks for the next message.

How a real server gets there

A consumer is still working on a message (a slow sink, retries) when the server side ends the connection: pg_terminate_backend by an administrator or a failover tool, a restart or a failover, the walsender's wal_sender_timeout (nobody answers its keepalive requests while the consumer holds the message, if WalReceiverStatusInterval is at least wal_sender_timeout), or a reset by a NAT or a load balancer. The timer's next status update then hits the dead socket and breaks the connector.

Live on PostgreSQL 18.6, with a terminated walsender (physical and pgoutput streams), the replication timeout and a TCP reset:

  • main: the next MoveNextAsync threw NullReferenceException (in NpgsqlConnector.ReadMessage), in Release and Debug.
  • With this change: "The connection was previously broken because of the following exception", with the write failure inside. Without a failure, neither build throws.
  • An at-least-once consumer that acknowledges each message with SetReplicationStatus and SendStatusUpdate on a connection that died meanwhile: on main the first SendStatusUpdate returned normally and the next MoveNextAsync threw NullReferenceException. With Fix zero feedback intervals and swallowed status update failures #6719 and this change, SendStatusUpdate throws the write failure, and MoveNextAsync throws it again as the break reason.

Tests

  • ReplicationFeedbackMockTests.Timer_status_update_failure_ends_the_stream, reading through the message's stream and bypassing it as pgoutput does: the consumer holds a message while the timer's write fails. Red first: NullReferenceException in both cases.
  • SendStatusUpdate_reports_write_failures (from Fix zero feedback intervals and swallowed status update failures #6719) gets an assertion for the next MoveNextAsync, which fails without this change.

For the reviewer

  • A small core change, an internal getter in NpgsqlConnector; no public API change.
  • The check sits right after the yield return, not before ReadMessage: with pgoutput's direct reads the NullReferenceException comes from skipping the rest of the payload, before the loop reads again, and a check before ReadMessage alone left that case red.
  • Best effort: the check takes no lock, so a break right after it can still end in a NullReferenceException. The window shrinks from the whole time the consumer holds the message to a few statements.

Dependencies and merge order

Fixes #6700

Brar and others added 7 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>
When a status update of a feedback timer failed, the timer only logged
the failure, and breaking the connection disposed its buffers. If the
consumer held a message at that time, its next MoveNextAsync failed
with a NullReferenceException: when reading the next message, or, for
plugins like pgoutput that read from the buffer directly, when skipping
the rest of the held message. Any other failure that broke the
connection while the consumer held a message, e.g. a SendStatusUpdate
that failed, had the same effect.

The stream now checks the connection when the consumer asks for the
next message. If it broke, it throws an NpgsqlException with the
exception that broke it as the inner exception, with the message
NpgsqlConnector.StartUserAction uses for a broken connection when
keepalive is enabled. NpgsqlConnector gets an internal BreakReason
accessor for this.

pgoutput's Insert, Update and Delete messages whose values weren't read
to the end still fail with a misleading exception in this case, since
pgoutput consumes the rest of the row before it asks for the next
message.

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

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Replication: MoveNextAsync throws NullReferenceException after the connection broke while a message was held

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