Re: Use SIGTERM instead of SIGUSR1 for slotsync worker to exit during promotion?

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 7:42 PM shveta malik <shveta(dot)malik(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > > One idea would be to prevent the restart altogether. For example,
> > > ProcessSlotSyncMessage() could set SlotSyncCtx->last_start_time to
> > > a special value (like -1), and SlotSyncWorkerCanRestart() could return
> > > false (i.e., prevent postmater from starting up slotsync worker) when
> > > it sees that. Alternatively, SlotSyncWorkerCanRestart() could simply
> > > check SlotSyncCtx->stopSignaled.
> > >
> > > That said, as far as I remember correctly, postmaster is generally not
> > > supposed to touch shared memory (per the comments in postmaster.c),
> > > so I'm not sure this approach is acceptable. On the other hand,
> > > postmaster and the slotsync worker already rely on SlotSyncCtx->last_start_time,
> > > so perhaps there's some precedent here.
> > >
> > IIUC, checking SlotSyncCtx->stopSignaled in SlotSyncWorkerCanRestart()
> > may not be ideal, as it requires a spinlock to avoid races with the
> > startup process and it is disallowed to take lock in postmaster main
> > loop. Whereas, SlotSyncCtx->last_start_time doesn’t need a lock since
> > the postmaster accesses it only when the worker is not alive.
> >
>
> I agree.

Could you clarify what issue might arise from checking
SlotSyncCtx->stopSignaled without holding a spinlock in
SlotSyncWorkerCanRestart()? Is it actually problematic?

That said, since the postmaster should generally avoid
touching shared memory, it doesn't seem like a good idea
for it to check SlotSyncCtx->stopSignaled. So I'm fine with
instead lowering the log level for the "worker will not start"
message to DEBUG1.

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao