Re: Add GoAway protocol message for graceful but fast server shutdown/switchover

On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 12:20 PM Tomas Vondra <tomas(at)vondra(dot)me> wrote:
> * In fact, does it improve the smart shutdown case in practice? Let's
> say we have a single instance, and we're restarting it. It'll send
> GoAway to all the clients, the good clients will try to reconnect. But
> if there's even a single "bad" client ignoring the GoAway, all the
> well-behaved clients will get stuck. Ofc, that can happen without the
> GoAway message too - a client may disconnect because of timeout etc. But
> it makes it more likely, and it'll affect the well-behaved clients.
>
> * Would it make sense to have some payload in the GoAway message? I'm
> thinking about (a) some deadline by which the client should disconnect,
> e.g. time of planned restart / shutdown, (b) priority, expressing how
> much the client should try to disconnect (and maybe take more drastic
> actions).

I'd been wondering about these as well, but in the context of the
tangential thread [1]. HTTP has much stronger semantics for its GOAWAY
frames, for instance.

--Jacob

[1] https://postgr.es/m/CAOYmi%2BmSn8xQ7ExqY07V6G2oFXN2nY%2B7f4yf_RV2%3D7xNCKwW-Q%40mail.gmail.com