Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile

From: Amul Sul <sulamul(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Zsolt Parragi <zsolt(dot)parragi(at)percona(dot)com>
Cc: Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, Chao Li <li(dot)evan(dot)chao(at)gmail(dot)com>, Jakub Wartak <jakub(dot)wartak(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile
Date: 2026-03-20 11:31:00
Message-ID: CAAJ_b95Oj6Kb6YGsV42Gqy=N7GuOX+FMmEtUbS7NC6BvARN2mQ@mail.gmail.com
Views: Whole Thread | Raw Message | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 2:18 AM Zsolt Parragi <zsolt(dot)parragi(at)percona(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> Path is ignored with a positional argument, I think this is a bug?
>
> This fails:
>
> pg_waldump --path /wal/dir 000000010000000000000001
>
> And this works:
>
> pg_waldump --path /wal/dir --start 0/01000028 --end 0/010020F8
>

Good catch! I've fixed this in the attached version and updated a test
case to cover this scenario.

> +{
> + int fname_len = strlen(fname);
> +
>
> Shouldn't this use size_t?
>

Okay, that can be used. I’ve done the same in the attached version.

> + /*
> + * Setup temporary directory to store WAL segments and set up an exit
> + * callback to remove it upon completion.
> + */
> + setup_tmpwal_dir(waldir);
>
> Maybe this could be deferred to be created only on first use? If I
> understand correctly, in a typical scenario waldump won't use this
> temporary directory, yet it always creates it.

Yeah, that optimization can be done, but passing the waldir -- which
is only used once -- to the point where the first temp file is created
would require quite a bit of code refactoring that doesn't seem to
offer much gain, IMO.

Regards,
Amul

Attachment Content-Type Size
v21-0001-Move-tar-detection-and-compression-logic-to-comm.patch application/x-patch 7.1 KB
v21-0002-pg_waldump-Preparatory-refactoring-for-tar-archi.patch application/x-patch 8.4 KB
v21-0003-pg_waldump-Add-support-for-reading-WAL-from-tar-.patch application/x-patch 56.4 KB
v21-0004-pg_verifybackup-Enable-WAL-parsing-for-tar-forma.patch application/x-patch 16.7 KB

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message 2026-03-20 11:37:55 RE: [Proposal] Adding Log File Capability to pg_createsubscriber
Previous Message Dilip Kumar 2026-03-20 11:28:04 Re: synchronized_standby_slots behavior inconsistent with quorum-based synchronous replication