Re: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila(at)huawei(dot)com>
Cc: "'Jaime Casanova'" <jaime(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, "'Fujii Masao'" <masao(dot)fujii(at)gmail(dot)com>, "'PostgreSQL-development'" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>, "'Dimitri Fontaine'" <dimitri(at)2ndquadrant(dot)fr>, cedric(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com, "'Robert Haas'" <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, "'Greg Smith'" <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, "'Josh Berkus'" <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, "'Magnus Hagander'" <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>, "'Christopher Browne'" <cbbrowne(at)gmail(dot)com>, "'Alvaro Herrera'" <alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
Subject: Re: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL
Date: 2012-12-11 15:21:47
Message-ID: 15654.1355239307@sss.pgh.pa.us
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Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila(at)huawei(dot)com> writes:
> On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 5:25 AM Jaime Casanova wrote:
>> can we at least send the source file in the error message when a
>> parameter has a wrong value?
>>
>> suppose you do: SET PERSISTENT shared_preload_libraries TO
>> 'some_nonexisting_lib';
>> when you restart postgres and that lib doesn't exist you can get
>> confused when looking at postgresql.conf and find an empty string
>> there

> This can be done but for this we need to change internal functions

You'd need to change a whole lot of places to respond to this request.
Frankly it sounds like wishful thinking to me. In many cases it's not
obvious whether a failure might be triggered by a GUC setting, and I
can't see dumping the whole content of postgresql.conf for any startup
failure.

I don't really believe Jaime's assumption anyway, which seems to be that
people will be too dumb to look at the include files when wondering what
value a setting has. We've not had reports of such when using the
existing inclusion mechanism.

regards, tom lane

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