Track ongoing event fetches correctly in the presence of failure (#11240)

When an event fetcher aborts due to an exception, `_event_fetch_ongoing`
must be decremented, otherwise the event fetcher would never be
replaced. If enough event fetchers were to fail, no more events would be
fetched and requests would get stuck waiting for events.

changelog.d/11240.bugfix

+Fix a long-standing bug where all requests that read events from the database could get stuck as a result of losing the database connection.

synapse/storage/databases/main/events_worker.py

@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ from typing import (
 
 import attr
 from constantly import NamedConstant, Names
+from prometheus_client import Gauge
 from typing_extensions import Literal
 
 from twisted.internet import defer
@@ -81,6 +82,12 @@ EVENT_QUEUE_ITERATIONS = 3  # No. times we block waiting for requests for events
 EVENT_QUEUE_TIMEOUT_S = 0.1  # Timeout when waiting for requests for events
 
 
+event_fetch_ongoing_gauge = Gauge(
+    "synapse_event_fetch_ongoing",
+    "The number of event fetchers that are running",
+)
+
+
 @attr.s(slots=True, auto_attribs=True)
 class _EventCacheEntry:
     event: EventBase
@@ -222,6 +229,7 @@ class EventsWorkerStore(SQLBaseStore):
         self._event_fetch_lock = threading.Condition()
         self._event_fetch_list = []
         self._event_fetch_ongoing = 0
+        event_fetch_ongoing_gauge.set(self._event_fetch_ongoing)
 
         # We define this sequence here so that it can be referenced from both
         # the DataStore and PersistEventStore.
@@ -732,28 +740,31 @@ class EventsWorkerStore(SQLBaseStore):
         """Takes a database connection and waits for requests for events from
         the _event_fetch_list queue.
         """
-        i = 0
-        while True:
-            with self._event_fetch_lock:
-                event_list = self._event_fetch_list
-                self._event_fetch_list = []
-
-                if not event_list:
-                    single_threaded = self.database_engine.single_threaded
-                    if (
-                        not self.USE_DEDICATED_DB_THREADS_FOR_EVENT_FETCHING
-                        or single_threaded
-                        or i > EVENT_QUEUE_ITERATIONS
-                    ):
-                        self._event_fetch_ongoing -= 1
-                        return
-                    else:
-                        self._event_fetch_lock.wait(EVENT_QUEUE_TIMEOUT_S)
-                        i += 1
-                        continue
-                i = 0
-
-            self._fetch_event_list(conn, event_list)
+        try:
+            i = 0
+            while True:
+                with self._event_fetch_lock:
+                    event_list = self._event_fetch_list
+                    self._event_fetch_list = []
+
+                    if not event_list:
+                        single_threaded = self.database_engine.single_threaded
+                        if (
+                            not self.USE_DEDICATED_DB_THREADS_FOR_EVENT_FETCHING
+                            or single_threaded
+                            or i > EVENT_QUEUE_ITERATIONS
+                        ):
+                            break
+                        else:
+                            self._event_fetch_lock.wait(EVENT_QUEUE_TIMEOUT_S)
+                            i += 1
+                            continue
+                    i = 0
+
+                self._fetch_event_list(conn, event_list)
+        finally:
+            self._event_fetch_ongoing -= 1
+            event_fetch_ongoing_gauge.set(self._event_fetch_ongoing)
 
     def _fetch_event_list(
         self, conn: Connection, event_list: List[Tuple[List[str], defer.Deferred]]
@@ -977,6 +988,7 @@ class EventsWorkerStore(SQLBaseStore):
 
             if self._event_fetch_ongoing < EVENT_QUEUE_THREADS:
                 self._event_fetch_ongoing += 1
+                event_fetch_ongoing_gauge.set(self._event_fetch_ongoing)
                 should_start = True
             else:
                 should_start = False