Re: Cleaning up unreferenced table files

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka(at)iki(dot)fi> writes:
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka(at)iki(dot)fi> writes:
>>> I feel that crashes that leaves behind stale files are rare.
>>
>> Indeed, and getting more so all the time ...

> How so? Have changes been made in those parts of the code?

No, just that the overall reliability of Postgres keeps improving.

At the time that TODO entry was created, I don't think we even had the
ability to roll back table creates/drops properly, so there were
scenarios in which unreferenced files could be left behind without even
assuming any software error. And the prevalence of backend crashes was
way higher than it is now, too. So I think a good argument could be
made that the TODO item isn't nearly as important as it was at the time.

> If nobody ever runs into this issue in production, and this whole exercise
> turns out to be completely unnecessary, at least we'll know. That alone
> makes me feel better.

We will know no such thing, unless the patch is made to announce the
problem so intrusively that people are certain to see it *and report it
to us*. Which I don't think will be acceptable.

regards, tom lane