Re: should we enable log_checkpoints out of the box?

On Wed, Nov 3, 2021 at 09:09:18AM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> I think that's pretty impractical. In order to get rid of all of the
> harmless application errors, you'd have to set log_min_messages to
> FATAL. That's a bad idea for two reasons. First, it wouldn't even
> filter out all the garbage that you don't care about, and second, it
> would filter out a lot of really important things that you do care
> about. For example, you would still get messages in the logs like
> "FATAL: connection to client lost" and "FATAL: canceling
> authentication due to timeout" that probably nobody really cares
> about, but you would not get messages like "ERROR: downlink or sibling
> link points to deleted block in index <whatever>" which are indicative
> of data corruption and thus important. For better or for worse, the
> distinction between ERROR, FATAL, and PANIC is entirely based on what
> we do after printing the message, and NOT on how serious the message
> is.
>
> Now maybe we want to improve that at some point, but it shouldn't
> stand in the way of this proposal. If people are living with the
> gigantic volume of ERROR and FATAL messages that typically end up in
> the logs today, they can certainly live with the absolutely tiny
> volume of additional information that would be generated by
> log_checkpoints=on.

See my later email --- I think we need to make a few changes for this to
work well.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.