Draft release notes for 9.1.3, 9.0.7, 8.4.11, 8.3.18.

doc/src/sgml/release-8.3.sgml

 <!-- doc/src/sgml/release-8.3.sgml -->
 <!-- See header comment in release.sgml about typical markup -->
 
+ <sect1 id="release-8-3-18">
+  <title>Release 8.3.18</title>
+
+  <note>
+  <title>Release Date</title>
+  <simpara>2012-02-27</simpara>
+  </note>
+
+  <para>
+   This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.17.
+   For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see
+   <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
+  </para>
+
+  <sect2>
+   <title>Migration to Version 8.3.18</title>
+
+   <para>
+    A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.
+   </para>
+
+   <para>
+    However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17,
+    see the release notes for 8.3.17.
+   </para>
+
+  </sect2>
+
+  <sect2>
+   <title>Changes</title>
+
+   <itemizedlist>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix btree index corruption from insertions concurrent with vacuuming
+      (Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      An index page split caused by an insertion could sometimes cause a
+      concurrently-running <command>VACUUM</> to miss removing index entries
+      that it should remove.  After the corresponding table rows are removed,
+      the dangling index entries would cause errors (such as <quote>could not
+      read block N in file ...</>) or worse, silently wrong query results
+      after unrelated rows are re-inserted at the now-free table locations.
+      This bug has been present since release 8.2, but occurs so infrequently
+      that it was not diagnosed until now.  If you have reason to suspect
+      that it has happened in your database, reindexing the affected index
+      will fix things.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Allow non-existent values for some settings in <command>ALTER
+      USER/DATABASE SET</> (Heikki Linnakangas)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Allow <varname>default_text_search_config</>,
+      <varname>default_tablespace</>, and <varname>temp_tablespaces</> to be
+      set to names that are not known.  This is because they might be known
+      in another database where the setting is intended to be used, or for the
+      tablespace cases because the tablespace might not be created yet.  The
+      same issue was previously recognized for <varname>search_path</>, and
+      these settings now act like that one.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Track the OID counter correctly during WAL replay, even when it wraps
+      around (Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Previously the OID counter would remain stuck at a high value until the
+      system exited replay mode.  The practical consequences of that are
+      usually nil, but there are scenarios wherein a standby server that's
+      been promoted to master might take a long time to advance the OID
+      counter to a reasonable value once values are needed.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix regular expression back-references with <literal>*</> attached
+      (Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Rather than enforcing an exact string match, the code would effectively
+      accept any string that satisfies the pattern sub-expression referenced
+      by the back-reference symbol.
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      A similar problem still afflicts back-references that are embedded in a
+      larger quantified expression, rather than being the immediate subject
+      of the quantifier.  This will be addressed in a future
+      <productname>PostgreSQL</> release.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix recently-introduced memory leak in processing of
+      <type>inet</>/<type>cidr</> values (Heikki Linnakangas)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      A patch in the December 2011 releases of <productname>PostgreSQL</>
+      caused memory leakage in these operations, which could be significant
+      in scenarios such as building a btree index on such a column.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Avoid double close of file handle in syslogger on Windows (MauMau)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Ordinarily this error was invisible, but it would cause an exception
+      when running on a debug version of Windows.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix I/O-conversion-related memory leaks in plpgsql
+      (Andres Freund, Jan Urbanski, Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Certain operations would leak memory until the end of the current
+      function.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Improve <application>pg_dump</>'s handling of inherited table columns
+      (Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      <application>pg_dump</> mishandled situations where a child column has
+      a different default expression than its parent column.  If the default
+      is textually identical to the parent's default, but not actually the
+      same (for instance, because of schema search path differences) it would
+      not be recognized as different, so that after dump and restore the
+      child would be allowed to inherit the parent's default.  Child columns
+      that are <literal>NOT NULL</> where their parent is not could also be
+      restored subtly incorrectly.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix <application>pg_restore</>'s direct-to-database mode for
+      INSERT-style table data (Tom Lane)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Direct-to-database restores from archive files made with
+      <option>--inserts</> or <option>--column-inserts</> options fail when
+      using <application>pg_restore</> from a release dated September or
+      December 2011, as a result of an oversight in a fix for another
+      problem.  The archive file itself is not at fault, and text-mode
+      output is okay.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix error in <filename>contrib/intarray</>'s <literal>int[] &amp;
+      int[]</> operator (Guillaume Lelarge)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      If the smallest integer the two input arrays have in common is 1,
+      and there are smaller values in either array, then 1 would be
+      incorrectly omitted from the result.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix error detection in <filename>contrib/pgcrypto</>'s
+      <function>encrypt_iv()</> and <function>decrypt_iv()</>
+      (Marko Kreen)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      These functions failed to report certain types of invalid-input errors,
+      and would instead return random garbage values for incorrect input.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Fix one-byte buffer overrun in <filename>contrib/test_parser</>
+      (Paul Guyot)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      The code would try to read one more byte than it should, which would
+      crash in corner cases.
+      Since <filename>contrib/test_parser</> is only example code, this is
+      not a security issue in itself, but bad example code is still bad.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Use <function>__sync_lock_test_and_set()</> for spinlocks on ARM, if
+      available (Martin Pitt)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      This function replaces our previous use of the <literal>SWPB</>
+      instruction, which is deprecated and not available on ARMv6 and later.
+      Reports suggest that the old code doesn't fail in an obvious way on
+      recent ARM boards, but simply doesn't interlock concurrent accesses,
+      leading to bizarre failures in multiprocess operation.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Use <option>-fexcess-precision=standard</> option when building with
+      gcc versions that accept it (Andrew Dunstan)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      This prevents assorted scenarios wherein recent versions of gcc will
+      produce creative results.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Allow use of threaded Python on FreeBSD (Chris Rees)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Our configure script previously believed that this combination wouldn't
+      work; but FreeBSD fixed the problem, so remove that error check.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>
+
+   </itemizedlist>
+
+  </sect2>
+ </sect1>
+
  <sect1 id="release-8-3-17">
   <title>Release 8.3.17</title>