Re: [HACKERS] Streaming replication document improvements

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Fujii Masao <masao(dot)fujii(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Yeah, I agree with you, but the difference is only how to achieve.
> ISTM that there are three choices:
>
> 1. Heikki's proposal
>> ReservedBackends = superuser_reserved_connections + max_wal_senders
>> MaxBackends = max_connections + autovacuum_max_workers + max_wal_senders + 1

This seemed sensible to me when Heikki first described it, but now it
seems overly complex.

> 2. My proposal
>    Remove superuser privilege from replication connection

I'm not sure this really fixes the problem. If we add a separate
replication privilege, then presumably superusers will automatically
have that privilege, in accord with our usual policy on such things.
So potentially someone could still set up replication using a
superuser account and then they could still get bitten by this
problem.

> 3. Your proposal
>    Treat superuser replication connection like non-superuser one

Well, only for this one very specific purpose. I would adjust the
docs like this:

Determines the number of connection "slots" that are reserved for
connections by PostgreSQL superusers. At most max_connections
connections can ever be active simultaneously. Whenever the number of
active concurrent connections is at least max_connections minus
superuser_reserved_connections, new connections will be accepted only
for superusers, and no new replication connections will be accepted.

I think that's pretty simple and clear. If we want to burn an extra
sentence explaining what this is all about, we could add:

(If replication connections were permitted to use the reserved
connection slots, an installation with max_wal_senders set to a value
greater than or equal to the value set for
superuser_reserved_connections might find that no reserved connections
remained for interactive access to the database.)

> Since 3. is confusing for me, I like 1. or 2.

What do others think?

...Robert