Re: sync process names between ps and pg_stat_activity

On Fri, Sep 1, 2017 at 5:33 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> As an aside, is there a reason why the archiver process is not included
>> in pg_stat_activity?
>
> It's not connected to shared memory.

Do you think that monitoring would be a reason sufficient to do so? My
personal opinion on the matter is that people are more and more going
to move on with pull (*) models (aka pg_receivewal and such with
replication slots) instead of push (*) models (use of
archive_command), so that monitoring of the archiver becomes less and
less useful in the long-term. And there is also pg_stat_archiver that
covers largely the gap for archive failures.

Still, one reason that could be used to connect it to shared memory is
to control the interval of time used for archive attempts, which is
now a interval hardcoded of 1s in pgarch_ArchiverCopyLoop(). Here more
flexibility would be definitely useful.

(*): this wording is from a colleague, not from me.
--
Michael