On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 11:06 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote: > I could see supporting an additional "pause" option that means "pause at > the end of WAL if you don't reach the recovery target point". I'd also > be happy with a warning being emitted in the log if the recovery target > point isn't reached before reaching the end of WAL, but I don't think it > makes sense to change the existing behavior.
Indeed, let's not change the existing behavior. A warning showing up by default would be useful in itself, even if there are people that I think set up overly high recovery targets to be sure to replay WAL as much as possible. As recovery_target_action has meaning when a recovery target has been reached, I would guess that we would want a new option that has the same mapping value as recovery_target_action, except that it activates when the target recovery is *not* reached. Hence it would be possible to shutdown, pause or promote at will when recovery completes, and be able to take a separate action is the recovery target is indeed reached. The default of this parameter would be "promote", which is what happens now.
Agreed. I understand the complexities with backward compatibility on changing the existing behaviour.
Even, I was more inclined towards introducing a new parameter and as suggested, will consider the options pause, shutdown or promote for new parameter.
