On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 14:34, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> It's hard to say what the safest option is, I think. There seem to be
>>>> basically three proposals on the table:
>>>
>>>> 1. Back-port the dead-man switch, and ignore exit 128.
>>>> 2. Don't back-port the dead-man switch, but ignore exit 128 anyway.
>>>> 3. Revert to Magnus's original solution.
>>>
>>>> Each of these has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of #1
>>>> is that it is safer than #2, and that is usually something we prize
>>>> fairly highly. The disadvantage of #1 is that it involves
>>>> back-porting the dead-man switch, but on the flip side that code has
>>>> been out in the field for over a year now in 8.4, and AFAIK we haven't
>>>> any trouble with it. Solution #3 should be approximately as safe as
>>>> solution #1, and has the advantage of touching less code in the back
>>>> branches, but on the other hand it is also NEW code. So I think it's
>>>> arguable which is the best solution. I think I like option #2 least
>>>> as among those choices, but it's a tough call.
>>>
>>> Well, I don't want to use Magnus' original solution in 8.4 or up,
>>> so I don't like #3 much: it's not only new code but code which would
>>> get very limited testing. And I don't believe that the risk of
>>> unexpected use of exit(128) is large enough to make #1 preferable to #2.
>>> YMMV.
>>
>> So, can we go with #2 for the next point releases of <= 8.3? I
>> understand that our customer who has been testing that approach hasn't
>> seen any unexpected side-effects.
>
> Do we feel this is safe enough?
I've yet to hear of a way a process can exit with a 128 that seems
like it could happen in our code.
> Also, just to be clear - they tested the "ignore 128 only" patch?
Yes.
--
Dave Page
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