Re: Renaming of pg_xlog and pg_clog

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
> > That said, I'd also like to see a --force or similar option or mechanism
> > put in place to reduce the risk of users trashing their system because
> > they think pg_resetwal is "safe." ("It's just gonna reset things to make
> > the database start again, should be fine.").
>
> You know we already have that, right?

Yes, but I was meaning an option which would be required to make
pg_resetxlog actually *do* anything. In other words, I'd rather have it
report some info back to the user, if it's run without the
'--really-force' or what-have-you option, and only proceed with
clearing the WAL or rewriting pg_control when '--really-force' is used.

> > pg_destroydb almost seems like a better choice, though I suppose
> > 'pg_clearwal' would be more acceptable. Doesn't have quite the same
> > impact though.
> >
> > Not sure on the best answer here, but it's definitely foot-gun that some
> > users have ended up using on themselves with depressing regularity.
>
> Just to provide some perspective from the other side of this, I
[...]

I wasn't suggesting that we remove the capability. There are certainly
use-cases for it, but, unfortunately, I've seen a number of cases where
users simply google'd an error that they got back when trying to start
PG and found someone saying "well, I got this error, but then I ran
pg_resetxlog, and now the database starts up again."

It likely doesn't help that the top links tend to be to mailing list
archives where pg_resetxlog was brought up.

Thanks!

Stephen