IPC: BufferIo
Waiting for buffer I/O to complete
PostgreSQL wait event dossier
ClassIPC
Event
BufferIo
VersionsPG 17-18
Evidence7 source location(s)
Official description
Waiting for buffer I/O to complete
| PG 13 | PG 14 | PG 15 | PG 16 | PG 17 | PG 18 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Earlier names: IPC/BufferIO (PG 14-16), LWLock/BufferIO (PG 13)
Trigger mechanism
pgstat_report_wait_start at src/backend/storage/lmgr/lwlock.c:765 is the grep-verified reporting path. The public identity/resource is mapped at src/backend/access/transam/xact.c:2627. The instrumented operation is: Waiting for buffer I/O to complete. The BufferIo path has reached a process-coordination point and sleeps until a peer, worker, barrier, queue, or replication phase signals progress.
Normal or trouble?
- Normal: Brief rendezvous is normal when every participant continues to advance.
- Investigate: Investigate when the same phase persists across three samples, the expected peer is absent or blocked, or a queue and its dependants stop moving.
Diagnostic SQL
Sessions waiting on IPC/BufferIo
Current IPC cohort
Lock and relation context for these sessions
Response
- Identify the peer or phase named by the event.
- Inspect that participant’s wait, error, and progress state.
- Repair the stalled participant or upstream dependency instead of treating the waiter as the root cause.
Source evidence
- PostgreSQL 13.23 · src/backend/access/transam/xact.c:2627 —
BufferIO - PostgreSQL 13.23 · src/backend/storage/lmgr/lwlock.c:150 —
BufferIO - PostgreSQL 13.23 · src/backend/storage/lmgr/lwlock.c:765 —
pgstat_report_wait_start - PostgreSQL 16.15 · src/backend/storage/buffer/bufmgr.c:5167 —
WAIT_EVENT_BUFFER_IO
Related controls and signals
- GUCs: None directly.
- Metrics: [metric:waiting_sessions] · [metric:wait_event_share]