Re: WAL & RC1 status

> I am *not* feeling good about pushing out an RC1 release candidate
> today.
>
> I've been going through the WAL code, trying to understand it and
> document it. I've found a number of minor problems and several major
> ones ("major" meaning "can't really fix without an incompatible file
> format change, hence initdb"). I've reported the major problems to
> the mailing lists but gotten almost no feedback about what to do.
>
> In addition, I'm still looking for the bug that I originally went in to
> find: Scott Parish's report of being unable to restart after a normal
> shutdown of beta4. Examination of his WAL log shows some pretty serious
> lossage (see attached dump). My current theory is that the
> buffer-slinging logic in xlog.c dropped one or more whole buffers' worth
> of log records, but I haven't figured out exactly how.
>
> I want to veto putting out an RC1 until these issues are resolved...
> comments?

I was not sure how to respond. Requiring an initdb at this stage seems
like it could be a pretty major blow to beta testers. However, if we
will have 7.1 problems with WAL that can not be fixed without a file
format change, we will have problems down the road. Is there a version
number in the WAL file? Can we put conditional code in there to create
new log file records with an updated format?

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
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