Re: Experimental patch for inter-page delay in VACUUM - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Experimental patch for inter-page delay in VACUUM
Date
Msg-id 24941.1067980253@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Experimental patch for inter-page delay in VACUUM  (Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>)
Responses Re: Experimental patch for inter-page delay in VACUUM
List pgsql-hackers
Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
> Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
>> The main problem with this is knowing which files need to be fsync'd.

> Why could the postmaster not just fsync *every* file?

You want to find, open, and fsync() every file in the database cluster
for every checkpoint?  Sounds like a non-starter to me.  In typical
situations I'd expect there to be lots of files that have no writes
during any given checkpoint interval (system catalogs for instance).

> I'm assuming fsync syncs writes issued by other processes on the same file,
> which isn't necessarily true though.

It was already pointed out that we can't rely on that assumption.

> Or using aio write ahead as much as you want and then just make checkpoint
> block until all the writes are completed. You don't actually need to rush them
> at all, just know when they're done.

If the objective is to avoid an i/o storm, I don't think this does it.
The system could easily delay most of the writes until the next syncer()
pass.
        regards, tom lane


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