Re: Disable page writes when fsync off, add GUC - Mailing list pgsql-patches

From Stephen Frost
Subject Re: Disable page writes when fsync off, add GUC
Date
Msg-id 20050704144451.GN24207@ns.snowman.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to Disable page writes when fsync off, add GUC  (Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>)
List pgsql-patches
* Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us) wrote:
> This patch disables page writes to WAL when fsync is off, because with
> no fsync guarantee, the page write recovery isn't useful.

This doesn't seem quite right to me.  What happens with PITR?  And
Postgres crashes?  While many people seriously distrust running w/ fsync
off, I'm sure there's quite a few folks which do.

> This also adds a full_page_writes GUC to turn off page writes to WAL.
> Some people might not want full_page_writes, but still might want fsync.

Adding an option to not do page writes to WAL seems fine to me, but I
think WAL writes should be on by default, even in the fsync=off case.
If people want to turn it off, fine, for either case since we expect
they understand what it means to have it turned off, but I don't think
the two options should be coupled as is being proposed.

    Thanks,

        Stephen

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