Re: crash recovery vs partially written WAL - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Bruce Momjian
Subject Re: crash recovery vs partially written WAL
Date
Msg-id 20201231231113.GA30966@momjian.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: crash recovery vs partially written WAL  (Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 02:27:44PM -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Bruce Momjian (bruce@momjian.us) wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 12:52:46PM -0800, Andres Freund wrote:
> > > A question from a colleague made me wonder if there are scenarios where
> > > two subsequent crashes could lead to wrong WAL to be applied.
> > > 
> > > Imagine the following scenario
> > > [ xlog page 1 ][ xlog page 2 ][ xlog page 3 ][ xlog page 4 ]
> > >     ^flush                                        ^write ^insert
> > > 
> > > if the machine crashes in this moment, we could end up with a situation
> > > where page 1, 3, 4 made it out out to disk, but page 2 wasn't.
> > 
> > I don't see any flaw in your logic.  Seems we have to zero out all
> > future WAL files, not just to the end of the current one, or at least
> > clear xlp_pageaddr on each future page.
> 
> I've wondered before if we should be doing a timeline switch at the end
> of crash recovery...

For a while we had trouble tracking timeline switches, but I think we
might be fine on that now.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             https://enterprisedb.com

  The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee




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