Re: pg_rewind hangs if --source-server is used and syncrep is enabled

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 04:39:39PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> if pg_rewind is told to fetch data via a libpq connection
> (--source-server), synchronous replication is enabled and there is only
> one sync standby (pilot error, but sill); pg_rewinding the old master
> hangs at the CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE step (CREATE TABLE waiting for
> X/XXXXXXXX). At least this happened to one of our clients while
> evaluating pg_rewind.
>
> To the user, the last thing printed is "need to copy XXXX MB [...]". If
> the user cancels the pg_rewind command with ^C, the backend keeps
> hanging around even in --dry-run mode. That won't hurt too much as it
> does not seem to block future pg_rewind runs after synchronous_commit
> has been set to a different value, but looks surprising to me.
>
> Not sure whether pg_rewind could error out gracefully without hanging in
> this case,

My colleague Christoph Berg pointed out that pg_rewind could just set
synchronous_commit = local before creating the temporary table, which
indeed works, proof-of-concept patch attached

Michael

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Michael Banck
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