Re: fsync error handling in pg_receivewal, pg_recvlogical

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 12:48:09PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Do we need to review the fsync error handling in pg_receivewal and
> pg_recvlogical, following the recent backend changes? The current
> default behavior is that these tools will log fsync errors and then
> reconnect and proceed with the next data streaming in. As a result, you
> might then have some files in the accumulated WAL that have not been
> fsynced. Perhaps a hard exit would be more appropriate?

Yes, I think that we are going to need an equivalent of that for all
frontend tools. At various degrees, making sure that a fsync happens
is also important for pg_dump, pg_basebackup, pg_rewind and
pg_checksums so it is not only a problem of the two tools you mention.
It seems to me that the most correct way to have those failures would
be to use directly exit(EXIT_FAILURE) in file_utils.c where
appropriate.
--
Michael