Multi-host: `retries` never increments — prefer-standby loops forever, all-hosts-down hangs queries
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- Dominant language
- JavaScript
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Description
Bug
The local retries counter in src/connection.js is read but never incremented — only
options.shared.retries (the backoff counter) is. With ≥2 hosts, retries stays 0 forever, so:
target_session_attrs: 'prefer-standby'with the standby down:tryNext()
(L796) never runs
out of hosts, so it terminates every primary connection and retries the dead standby forever.- All hosts down:
error()
(L382) always sees
"another host to try" and swallows every connect error — queries hang forever, even with
connect_timeout. - Related (#988):
connectTimedOut()callserrored()directly, bypassing failover, so
CONNECT_TIMEOUTrejects instead of trying the next host whileECONNREFUSEDfails over.
Repro
With a primary on localhost:5432 and nothing on 5431 — both cases hang forever on 3.4.9:
// expected: connects to the primary
await postgres({ host: ['localhost', 'localhost'], port: [5431, 5432],
target_session_attrs: 'prefer-standby', connect_timeout: 5 })`select 1`
// expected: rejects after both hosts fail
await postgres({ host: ['localhost', 'localhost'], port: [5431, 5430],
connect_timeout: 5 })`select 1`
Purposed Fix
Reset retries per connection cycle, increment per failed attempt, and surface the error once
every host is tried. prefer-standby requires a standby only on the first pass over the host list
and accepts any server on a second pass (like libpq). Route connect timeouts through error()
so they fail over like refused connections (fixes #988).
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start in src/connection.js by tracing tryNext(), error(), and connectTimedOut(), then reproduce the two host-list cases from the issue. Done means retries are bounded across hosts, prefer-standby reaches an available primary when appropriate, all-hosts-down rejects, and connection timeouts participate in failover like refused connections.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- javascript, postgresql
- Domain
- backend, database
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 55/100