Re: error handling in RegisterBackgroundWorker - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: error handling in RegisterBackgroundWorker
Date
Msg-id 20170329195840.rlmzm7nbznh5dlb6@alvherre.pgsql
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: error handling in RegisterBackgroundWorker  (Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
Robert Haas wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Peter Eisentraut
> <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> > How specifically would we do that?  And what user would choose the
> > behavior "start this background worker but don't worry if it doesn't work"?
> 
> Well, if the background worker is auto-prewarm, you'd probably rather
> have the database start rather than get unhappy about auto-prewarm
> failing.  If the background worker is your logical replication
> launcher it's a bit more serious, but if you have no subscriptions or
> they're not that critical, maybe you don't care.  If the background
> worker is in charge of telling your failover solution that this node
> is up, then starting without it is entirely pointless.
> 
> I would be inclined to leave this alone for now and revisit it for a
> future release.  I don't feel confident that we really know what the
> right thing to do is here.

I think the common case is for modules to be critical: you may not care
about it for auto-prewarm, but that seems like a special case.  I would
put it the other way around: having the load fail is a serious problem
unless specifically configured not to be.  I'd do as Peter suggests, and
perhaps allow the current behavior optionally.  In hindsight, the
current behavior seems like a mistake.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services



pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Subject: Re: Schedule and Release Management Team for PG10
Next
From: Michael Banck
Date:
Subject: Re: REINDEX CONCURRENTLY 2.0