Re: [mail] Re: Windows Build System - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 13:24, Vince Vielhaber wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Dave Page wrote:
> 
> > > On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Ron Mayer wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Cool irony in the automated .sig on the mailinglist software...
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Vince Vielhaber wrote:
> > > > > ...
> > > > > hammering the betas is a far cry from an "industrial-strength
> > > > > solution". ... TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
> > > >
> > > > Sounds like you're basically saying is
> > > >
> > > >    _do_ 'kill -9' the postmaster...
> > > >
> > > > and make sure it recovers gracefully when testing for an
> > > "industrial-
> > > > strength solution".
> > >
> > > Not what I said at all.
> >
> > It's not far off, but it's quite amusing none the less.
> 
> I agree with Tom on yanking the plug while it's operating.  Do you
> know the difference between kill -9 and yanking the plug?

Kill -9 seems to me _less_ severe than yanking the plug but much easier
to automate, so that could be the first thing to test. You have no hope
of passing the pull-the-plug test if you can't survive even kill -9.

Perhaps we could have a special "reliability-regression" test that does
"kill -9 postmaster", repeatedly, at random intervals, and checks for
consistency ?

Maybe we will find even some options for some OS'es to "force-unmount"
disks. I guess that setting IDE disk's to read-only with hdparm could
possibly achieve something like that on Linux. 

> > What I read from your postings it that you are demanding more rigourous
> > testing for a new major feature *prior* to it being comitted to CVS in a
> > dev cycle than I think we ever gave any previous new feature even in the
> > beta test phase. I don't object to testing, and have been thinking about
> > coding something to address Tom's concerns, but let's demand heavy
> > testing for the right reasons, not just to try to justify not doing a
> > Win32 port.
> 
> Nice try.  I've demanded nothing, quit twisting my words to fit your
> argument.  If you're going to test and call it conclusive, do some
> conclusive testing or call it something else. 

So we have no conclusive testing done that /proves/ postgres to be
reliable ? I guess that such thing (positive conclusive reliability
test) is impossible even in theory. 

But Dave has done some testing that could not prove the opposite and
concluded that it is good enough for him. So I guess that his test were
if fact "conclusive", if only just for him ;)

Sometimes it is very hard to do the pull-the-plug test - I've seen
people pondering over a HP server they could not switch off after
accidentally powering it up. Pulling the plug just made it beep, but did
not switch it off ;)

> But I suspect that since
> you don't know the difference between yanking the plug and kill -9 this
> conversation is a waste of time.

I assume you realize that U can't "kill -9" the plug ;)

-- 
Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>