Re: Improving compressibility of WAL files - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Aidan Van Dyk
Subject Re: Improving compressibility of WAL files
Date
Msg-id 20090110013734.GP12094@yugib.highrise.ca
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Improving compressibility of WAL files  (Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
* Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com> [090109 18:39]:

> I was hoping it might fall out of the other work being done in that area, 
> given how much that code is still being poked at right now.  As Hannu  
> pointed out, from a conceptual level you just need to carry along the 
> same information that pg_current_xlog_location() returns to the archiver 
> on all the paths where a segment might end early.

I was(am) also hoping that somethig falls out of sync-rep that gives me
better PITR backups (better than a small archive_timeout)... That hope
is what made me abandon this patch after the initial feedback.

> Rather than creating a whole new GUC, it might it be possible to turn  
> archive_mode into an enum setting:  off, on, and cleaned as the modes  
> perhaps.  That would avoid making a new setting, with the downside that a 
> bunch of critical code would look less clear than it does with a boolean.

I'm content to wait and see what falls out of sync-rep stuff...

... for now ... 

> I understand the case you've made for why it doesn't matter, and for  
> almost every case you're right.  The situation it may be vulnerable to is 
> where a burst of transactions come in just as the archive timeout expires 
> after minimal WAL activity.  There I think you can end up with a bunch of 
> clients waiting behind an almost full zero fill operation, which pushes 
> up the worst-case latency.  I've been able to measure the impact of the  
> similar case where zero-filling a brand new segment can impact things;  
> this would be much less like to happen because the timing would have to  
> line up just wrong, but I think it's still possible.

Ya, and it's one of just many of the times PG hits these worst-latency
spikes ;-)  GEnerally, it's *very* good... and once in a while, when all
the stars line up correctly, you get these spikes....

But even with these spikes, it's plenty fast enough for the stuff I've
done...

a.
-- 
Aidan Van Dyk                                             Create like a god,
aidan@highrise.ca                                       command like a king,
http://www.highrise.ca/                                   work like a slave.

pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Subject: Re: Updates of SE-PostgreSQL 8.4devel patches (r1389)
Next
From: Greg Smith
Date:
Subject: Re: Proposal: new border setting in psql