Re: Primary node detection race at clean startup

Hi,

Something was wrong with the attached patch. It is rejected by patch,
probably because of the large context. Attached is a new version that
also works with patch.

Best regards,
Emond Papegaaij

Op di 12 mei 2026 om 10:38 schreef Emond Papegaaij <emond(dot)papegaaij(at)gmail(dot)com>:

>
> Hi,
>
> In our tests, we've found an issue that can cause all Pgpool nodes to
> report an incorrect 'Role: standby':
> Role : standby ← stale, never updated on this node
> Backend Role : primary ← actual SR-check result
>
> This can happen if all nodes in a watchdog cluster start with a clean
> state at the same time. If the first node is still trying to determine
> the primary database, it's primary_node_id is -2. This value is then
> synced to other nodes in the cluster, causing all nodes to report the
> stale state indefinitely. Attached is a patch against 4.7 that should
> fix this.
>
> Note that this analysis was done by Claude Code and it also created
> the patch. The failure on our CI was real though and I think the
> explanation makes sense.
>
> Best regards,
> Emond Papegaaij