The basic scenario for the problem was that in the process of
resolving a query, if any rrset was eligible for prefetching, then it
would trigger a call to query_prefetch(), this call would run in
parallel to the normal query processing.
The problem arises due to the fact that both query_prefetch(), and,
in the original thread, a call to ns_query_recurse(), try to attach
to the recursionquota, but recursing client stats counter is only
incremented if ns_query_recurse() attachs to it first.
Conversely, if fetch_callback() is called before prefetch_done(),
it would not only detach from recursionquota, but also decrement
the stats counter, if query_prefetch() attached to te quota first
that would result in a decrement not matched by an increment, as
expected.
To solve this issue an atomic bool was added, it is set once in
ns_query_recurse(), allowing fetch_callback() to check for it
and decrement stats accordingly.
For a more compreensive explanation check the thread comment below:
https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/bind9/-/issues/1719#note_145857