Re: pgbench logging broken by time logic changes

Hello,

>>> I cannot say that I'm thrilled by having multiple tv stuff back in several
>>> place. I can be okay with one, though. What about the attached? Does it
>>> make sense?
>
> +1 The patch rounds down sd->start_time from ms to s but it seems to
> me a degradation.

Yes, please we should not use time.

>> At first, I also thought of fixing pg_time_now() to use gettimeofday() instead
>> of INSTR_TIME_SET_CURRENT, but I noticed that using INSTR_TIME_SET_CURRENT is
>> proper to measure time interval. I mean, this macro uses
>> lock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, ) if avilable, which give reliable interval
>> timing even in the face of changes to the system clock due to NTP.
>
> If I understand the op correctly, the problem here is the time values
> in pgbench log file are based on a bogus epoch.

It is not "bogus", but is not necessary epoch depending on the underlying
function called behind by INSTR_TIME macros, and people are entitled to
expect epoch for log correlations.

> If it's the only issue
> here and and if we just want to show the time based on the unix epoch
> time, just recording the difference would work as I scketched in the
> attached. (Precisely theepoch would move if we set the system clock
> but I don't think that matters:p)

I do like the approach.

I'm hesitant to promote it for fixing the beta, but the code impact is
small enough, so I'd say yes. Maybe there is a similar issue with progress
which should probably use the same approach. I think that aligning the
implementations can wait for pg15.

The patch as white space issues. Attached an updated version which fixes
that, adds comments and simplify the code a little bit.

> I'm not sure we have transaction lasts for very short time that
> nanoseconds matters.

Indeed.

--
Fabien.