The request processing is delayed by a timer.  Since nginx updates
internal time once at the start of each event loop iteration, this
normally ensures constant time delay, adding a mitigation from
time-based attacks.

A notable exception to this is the case when there are no additional
events before the timer expires.  To ensure constant-time processing
in this case as well, we trigger an additional event loop iteration
by posting a dummy event for the next event loop iteration.

Now it looks similar to what it was before background subrequests were
introduced in 9552758a786e.

When "aio" or "aio threads" is used while processing the response body of an
in-memory background subrequest, the subrequest could be finalized with an aio
operation still in progress.  Upon aio completion either parent request is
woken or the old r->write_event_handler is called again.  The latter may result
in request errors.  In either case post_subrequest handler is never called with
the full response body, which is typically expected when using in-memory
subrequests.

Currently in nginx background subrequests are created by the upstream module
and the mirror module.  The issue does not manifest itself with these
subrequests because they are header-only.  But it can manifest itself with
third-party modules which create in-memory background subrequests.