Recent versions of the Linux system header files cause xlogdefs.h to
believe that open_datasync should be the default sync method, whereas
formerly fdatasync was the default on Linux. open_datasync is a bad
choice, first because it doesn't actually outperform fdatasync (in fact
the reverse), and second because we try to use O_DIRECT with it, causing
failures on certain filesystems (e.g., ext4 with data=journal option).
This part of the patch is largely per a proposal from Marti Raudsepp.
More extensive changes are likely to follow in HEAD, but this is as much
change as we want to back-patch.
Also clean up confusing code and incorrect documentation surrounding the
fsync_writethrough option. Those changes shouldn't result in any actual
behavioral change, but I chose to back-patch them anyway to keep the
branches looking similar in this area.
In 9.0 and HEAD, also do some copy-editing on the WAL Reliability
documentation section.
Back-patch to all supported branches, since any of them might get used
on modern Linux versions.
enabled. Bypassing the kernel cache is counter-productive in that case,
because the archiver/walsender process will read from the WAL file
soon after it's written, and if it's not cached the read will cause
a physical read, eating I/O bandwidth available on the WAL drive.
Also, walreceiver process does unaligned writes, so disable O_DIRECT
in walreceiver process for that reason too.
This includes two new kinds of postmaster processes, walsenders and
walreceiver. Walreceiver is responsible for connecting to the primary server
and streaming WAL to disk, while walsender runs in the primary server and
streams WAL from disk to the client.
Documentation still needs work, but the basics are there. We will probably
pull the replication section to a new chapter later on, as well as the
sections describing file-based replication. But let's do that as a separate
patch, so that it's easier to see what has been added/changed. This patch
also adds a new section to the chapter about FE/BE protocol, documenting the
protocol used by walsender/walreceivxer.
Bump catalog version because of two new functions,
pg_last_xlog_receive_location() and pg_last_xlog_replay_location(), for
monitoring the progress of replication.
Fujii Masao, with additional hacking by me
Formerly, the default value of wal_sync_method was determined inside xlog.c,
but now it is determined inside guc.c. guc.c was reading xlogdefs.h
without having read <fcntl.h>, leading to wrong determination of
DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD. Obviously xlogdefs.h needs to include <fcntl.h>
for itself to ensure stable results.
before reporting a transaction committed. Data consistency is still
guaranteed (unlike setting fsync = off), but a crash may lose the effects
of the last few transactions. Patch by Simon, some editorialization by Tom.
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
recovery more manageable. Also, undo recent change to add FILE_HEADER
and WASTED_SPACE records to XLOG; instead make the XLOG page header
variable-size with extra fields in the first page of an XLOG file.
This should fix the boundary-case bugs observed by Mark Kirkwood.
initdb forced due to change of XLOG representation.
buffer manager with 'pg_clog', a specialized access method modeled
on pg_xlog. This simplifies startup (don't need to play games to
open pg_log; among other things, OverrideTransactionSystem goes away),
should improve performance a little, and opens the door to recycling
commit log space by removing no-longer-needed segments of the commit
log. Actual recycling is not there yet, but I felt I should commit
this part separately since it'd still be useful if we chose not to
do transaction ID wraparound.
* Store two past checkpoint locations, not just one, in pg_control.
On startup, we fall back to the older checkpoint if the newer one
is unreadable. Also, a physical copy of the newest checkpoint record
is kept in pg_control for possible use in disaster recovery (ie,
complete loss of pg_xlog). Also add a version number for pg_control
itself. Remove archdir from pg_control; it ought to be a GUC
parameter, not a special case (not that it's implemented yet anyway).
* Suppress successive checkpoint records when nothing has been entered
in the WAL log since the last one. This is not so much to avoid I/O
as to make it actually useful to keep track of the last two
checkpoints. If the things are right next to each other then there's
not a lot of redundancy gained...
* Change CRC scheme to a true 64-bit CRC, not a pair of 32-bit CRCs
on alternate bytes. Polynomial borrowed from ECMA DLT1 standard.
* Fix XLOG record length handling so that it will work at BLCKSZ = 32k.
* Change XID allocation to work more like OID allocation. (This is of
dubious necessity, but I think it's a good idea anyway.)
* Fix a number of minor bugs, such as off-by-one logic for XLOG file
wraparound at the 4 gig mark.
* Add documentation and clean up some coding infelicities; move file
format declarations out to include files where planned contrib
utilities can get at them.
* Checkpoint will now occur every CHECKPOINT_SEGMENTS log segments or
every CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT seconds, whichever comes first. It is also
possible to force a checkpoint by sending SIGUSR1 to the postmaster
(undocumented feature...)
* Defend against kill -9 postmaster by storing shmem block's key and ID
in postmaster.pid lockfile, and checking at startup to ensure that no
processes are still connected to old shmem block (if it still exists).
* Switch backends to accept SIGQUIT rather than SIGUSR1 for emergency
stop, for symmetry with postmaster and xlog utilities. Clean up signal
handling in bootstrap.c so that xlog utilities launched by postmaster
will react to signals better.
* Standalone bootstrap now grabs lockfile in target directory, as added
insurance against running it in parallel with live postmaster.
