Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
Cc: Fujii Masao <masao(dot)fujii(at)gmail(dot)com>, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de>, Florian Pflug <fgp(at)phlo(dot)org>, Dimitri Fontaine <dfontaine(at)hi-media(dot)com>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>
Subject: Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful
Date: 2010-05-12 12:52:15
Message-ID: AANLkTilAGEimrC9uof7e92CUBgZCYeVJqSmw3bTZb9qX@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 7:26 AM, Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-05-12 at 07:10 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure what to make of this.  Sometimes not shutting down
>> doesn't sound like a feature to me.
>
> It acts exactly the same in recovery as in normal running. It is not a
> special feature of recovery at all, bug or otherwise.

Simon, that doesn't make any sense. We are talking about a backend
getting stuck forever on an exclusive lock that is held by the startup
process and which will never be released (for example, because the
master has shut down and no more WAL can be obtained for replay). The
startup process does not hold locks in normal operation.

There are other things we might want to change about the shutdown
behavior (for example, switching from smart to fast automatically
after N seconds) which could apply to both the primary and the standby
and which might also be workarounds for this problem, but this
particular issue is specific to Hot Standby mode and pretending
otherwise is just sticking your head in the sand.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Simon Riggs 2010-05-12 13:15:11 Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful
Previous Message Greg Stark 2010-05-12 11:33:58 Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful