Re: Re: ALTER SYSTEM SET command to change postgresql.conf parameters (RE: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review]) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

* Andres Freund (andres@2ndquadrant.com) wrote:
> I personally consider readers of this list persons... And even people
> not interested in internals will have to look in there if they set
> something stupid before. Like setting max_connections higher than the
> currently configured kernel's max number of semaphores. Or a good number
> of other settings.

And that's actually one of the issues that I have with this overall
approach..  If configurations can be set in 'data' areas which prevent
the system from starting, that's *bad*.  Very bad.  It means people will
not be able to trust PG to manage the configuration sanely and will have
a lot of distrust and fear of the ALTER SYSTEM capability.

Requiring users to go monkey around inside of a system data directory to
clean things up in order to get PG to come up is a situation we should
do our best to prevent from ever happening.
Thanks,
    Stephen