Re: recovery getting interrupted is not so unusual as it used to be - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Florian Pflug
Subject Re: recovery getting interrupted is not so unusual as it used to be
Date
Msg-id 72DFECBE-419D-413B-985F-7DF29FB92573@phlo.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: recovery getting interrupted is not so unusual as it used to be  (Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: recovery getting interrupted is not so unusual as it used to be  (Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Jun 3, 2010, at 0:58 , Robert Haas wrote:
> But maybe the message isn't right the first time either.  After all
> the point of having a write-ahead log in the first place is that we
> should be able to prevent corruption in the event of an unexpected
> shutdown.  Maybe the right thing to do is to forget about adding a new
> state and just remove or change the errhint from these messages:

You've fallen prey to a (very common) miss-interpration of this message. It is not about corruption *caused* by a crash
duringrecovery, it's about corruption *causing* the crash. 

I'm not in favor of getting rid of that message entirely, since produces a worthwhile hint if the crash was really
causedby corrupt data. But it desperately needs a better wording that makes cause and effect perfectly clear. That even
youmiss-read it conclusively proves that. 

How about
"If this has happened repeatedly and without manual intervention, it was probably caused by corrupted data and you may
needto restore from backup" 
for the crash recovery case and
"If this has happened repeatedly and without manual intervention, it was probably caused by corrupted data and you may
needto choose an earlier recovery target" 
for the PITR case.

best regards,
Florian Pflug



pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Takahiro Itagaki
Date:
Subject: Re: [BUGS] BUG #5487: dblink failed with 63 bytes connection names
Next
From: Robert Haas
Date:
Subject: Re: recovery getting interrupted is not so unusual as it used to be