Re: Re: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review] - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On 2013-02-11 15:21:13 +0100, Boszormenyi Zoltan wrote:
> 2013-01-24 18:02 keltezéssel, Tom Lane írta:
> >Andres Freund <andres@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> >>On 2013-01-24 11:22:52 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> >>>Say again?  Surely the temp file is being written by whichever backend
> >>>is executing SET PERSISTENT, and there could be more than one.
> >>Sure, but the patch acquires SetPersistentLock exlusively beforehand
> >>which seems fine to me.
> >Why should we have such a lock?  Seems like that will probably introduce
> >as many problems as it fixes.  Deadlock risk, blockages, etc.  It is not
> >necessary for atomicity, since rename() would be atomic already.
>
> There is a problem when running SET PERSISTENT for different GUCs
> in parallel. All happen to read the same original file, and only one
> setting ends up in the result if you rely only on the rename() being atomic.
> The LWLock provides the serialization for that problem.

Tom was voting for one-setting-per-file, in that case the problem
doesn't exist.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

-- Andres Freund                       http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training &
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