Error "How can we receive a read, if the connection is closed"

[notcome]

Describe the bug

I am very new to Swift Server Side and Vapor, and I am confused by this migration to Swift concurrency. I saw AsyncKit being deprecated and decided to give the new ConnectionPool a try.

I found that seconds after I read the database, I saw this preconditionFailure:

PostgresNIO/ConnectionStateMachine.swift:657: Fatal error: How can we receive a read, if the connection is closed

To Reproduce

I have done a little bit wrapping around Vapor. My reading activity mostly happens inside this extension:

extension Request {
    func readingDB<Result>(closure: @escaping @Sendable (PostgresConnectionSource.Connection) async throws -> Result) async throws -> Result {
        try await application.postgresClient.withConnection { connection in
            try await connection.sql().raw("BEGIN TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED").run()
            do {
                let result = try await closure(connection)
                try await connection.sql().raw("COMMIT").run()
                return result
            } catch {
                try await connection.sql().raw("COMMIT").run()
                throw error
            }
        }
    }
}

and helpers:

enum PostgresClientKey: StorageKey {
    typealias Value = PostgresClient
}

extension Application {
    var postgresClient: PostgresClient! {
        get { self.storage[PostgresClientKey.self] }
        set { self.storage[PostgresClientKey.self] = newValue }
    }
}

The client starts with:

 let postgresConfiguration = PostgresClient.Configuration(
    host: hostname,
    port: port,
    username: username,
    password: password,
    database: databaseName,
    tls: .require(tlsConfiguration))
let postgresClient = PostgresClient(configuration: postgresConfiguration, backgroundLogger: Logger(label: "postgres"))
Task {
    await postgresClient.run()
}

Expected behavior

No error.

Environment

• Vapor Framework version: 4.84.6
• Vapor Toolbox version: 18.7.4
• OS version: macOS 14.0 (23A344)

[notcome]

Oh when trying to reproduce more instances of this, I found this line to crash:

https://github.com/vapor/postgres-nio/blob/c8269926eb3b705b70aff1975860e357760123c8/Sources/ConnectionPoolModule/PoolStateMachine%2BConnectionGroup.swift#L441

self.stats.availableStreams is 0 and closeAction.maxStreams is 1.

I only encountered this once.

[fabianfett]

@notcome How many requests do you need for this? Is a single request sufficient?

[fabianfett]

@notcome I just created this simple testcase based on what you are describing:

    func testKeepOpenAfterRequest() async throws {
        var mlogger = Logger(label: "test")
        mlogger.logLevel = .debug
        let logger = mlogger
        let eventLoopGroup = MultiThreadedEventLoopGroup(numberOfThreads: 8)
        self.addTeardownBlock {
            try await eventLoopGroup.shutdownGracefully()
        }

        var tlsConfiguration = TLSConfiguration.makeClientConfiguration()
        tlsConfiguration.certificateVerification = .none
        let clientConfig = PostgresClient.Configuration(
            host: env("POSTGRES_HOSTNAME") ?? "localhost",
            port: env("POSTGRES_PORT").flatMap({ Int($0) }) ?? 5432,
            username: env("POSTGRES_USER") ?? "test_username",
            password: env("POSTGRES_PASSWORD") ?? "test_password",
            database: env("POSTGRES_DB") ?? "test_database",
            tls: .prefer(tlsConfiguration)
        )
        let client = PostgresClient(configuration: clientConfig, eventLoopGroup: eventLoopGroup, backgroundLogger: logger)

        try await withThrowingTaskGroup(of: Void.self) { taskGroup in
            taskGroup.addTask {
                await client.run()
            }

            for i in 0..<1 {
                taskGroup.addTask {
                    try await client.withConnection() { connection in
                        _ = try await connection.query("SELECT 1", logger: logger)
                    }
                    print("done: \(i)")
                }
            }

            for _ in 0..<1 {
                _ = await taskGroup.nextResult()!
            }

            try await Task.sleep(for: clientConfig.options.connectionIdleTimeout +  .seconds(5))

            taskGroup.cancelAll()
        }
    }

Sadly that doesn't surface the issue. Can you please help me here? That would be really appreciated.

[notcome]

First of all I would be really happy to help you, but I am not sure what to do next.

I have three complications here:

1. I must point out that I am really new to backend development and I am not even using a local Postgres for testing. Instead I connect directly to AWS west-1 RDS instance all the way from China, and in case you don't know China <-> US connection can be extremely unstable. I am not sure if this is ever related.
2. I realize that I don't correctly assign an EventLoopGroup to my PostgresClient.
3. I realize that there is a bug in my query code: I opened another withConnection inside a withConnection closure.

During the process of me inspecting my code again and fixing 2 and 3, I found that:

• With 2 fixed and 3 unfixed, I noticed another instance of the issue on self.stats.availableStreams -= closeAction.maxStreams.
• With 2 deliberately unfixed and 3 fixed, I encountered one instance where a read is attempted on a closed connection, but much harder to get to.
• With both fixed, I am yet unable to reproduce this issue.

How many requests do you need for this? Is a single request sufficient?

If you mean connections, it seems to require two nested connections as I said above. If you mean requests inside my connections, my query wrapper opens a transaction, executes a closure which does at least one request, and commits the transaction.

Please let me know if you want any additional info.

[notcome]

I now consistently hit the issue of self.stats.availableStreams -= closeAction.maxStreams. It appears to happen whenever a connection went idle.

[notcome]

Okay, now I have read lots of code I have a better understanding of what happened. The issue self.stats.availableStreams -= closeAction.maxStreams happens because keep alive action is triggered twice for a very short period of time. Since each keep alive action reduces availableStreams by 1, if we have one available connection, we get an overflow error.

That means something is wrong with the state machine I suppose? Maybe I can make it to be easier to surface by setting a very short keep alive period.

[notcome]

I should probably move this issue to a separate discussion right? I think the original issue disappeared after I properly assign an event loop and avoid opening a connection inside a connection.