Re: Can Postgres 8.x start if some disks containing tablespaces are not mounted?

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 8:44 AM, Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek(dot)Kotala(at)sun(dot)com> wrote:
> Morris Goldstein napsal(a):
> > - Postgres running normally on /dev/sda and /dev/sdb.
> > - Update to table in /dev/sdb tablespace is committed but still exists in
> WAL.
> > - Postgres crashes (e.g. power failure).
> > - Postgres starts with /dev/sda only.
> > - Recovery needs to update table in /dev/sdb tablespace.
> >
> > I assume bad things will happen in this case.
> >
>
> yes, Probably best solution in this case is to implemented tablespace
> availability into postgreSQL and PostgreSQL shouldn't start when tablespace
> is missing.

I would rather see Postgres complain on the first reference to the
missing tablespace, (i.e. current behavior). Our schema has multiple
schemas, some of which are needed for our application at startup time;
others are needed later, once startup is complete.

Without going into a lot of details about our application, I'll just
say that the ability to start Postgres with just the "startup schema"
present is incredibly useful. On a SAN, we put this startup schema
on a volume that is permanently bound to a node, and the other schema
on a volume that can fail over to another node. Tablespaces allow us
to start Postgres and then fail back the volume containing the second
schema.

Morris