Re: should we enable log_checkpoints out of the box?

On Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 11:55:23AM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> I think shipping with log_checkpoints=on and
> log_autovacuum_min_duration=10m or so would be one of the best things
> we could possibly do to allow ex-post-facto troubleshooting of
> system-wide performance issues. The idea that users care more about
> the inconvenience of a handful of extra log messages than they do
> about being able to find problems when they have them matches no part
> of my experience. I suspect that many users would be willing to incur
> *way more* useless log messages than those settings would ever
> generate if it meant that they could actually find problems when and
> if they have them. And these messages would in fact be the most
> valuable thing in the log for a lot of users. What reasonable DBA
> cares more about the fact that the application attempted an insert
> that violated a foreign key constraint than they do about a checkpoint
> that took 20 minutes to fsync everything? The former is expected; if
> you thought that foreign key violations would never occur, you
> wouldn't need to incur the expense of having the system enforce them.
> The latter is unexpected and basically undiscoverable with default
> settings.

+1.
--
Michael