Re: Recovery from WAL archives not advancing timeline? - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Don Seiler
Subject Re: Recovery from WAL archives not advancing timeline?
Date
Msg-id CAHJZqBAH0cg9qMzUteyvJqJBbAFyY5y84P-kJTgcYQkXi+bcAQ@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Recovery from WAL archives not advancing timeline?  (Don Seiler <don@seiler.us>)
Responses Re: Recovery from WAL archives not advancing timeline?  (Don Seiler <don@seiler.us>)
List pgsql-admin
On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 11:10 AM Don Seiler <don@seiler.us> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 10:59 AM Don Seiler <don@seiler.us> wrote:

Do you think it would be worth trying to delete (move/rename) the 000000010000142E0000005B file and see if it changes things?

In my PG10 test cluster, I see a ".partial" file getting archived as well. In this case I would expect to see a 000000010000142E0000005B.partial.lz4 file in the archive but I don't. Although my test cluster used streaming replication where as this was done without streaming (just WAL archive/restore/recovery), and this one is PG 9.6 (I have both 9.6 and 10 here). I'll re-run my tests without streaming and both 9.6 and 10.

Doing some more testing and it seems to boil down to the fact that a replica should create a .partial file when it is promoted. I tested both PG 9.6 and 10, with replicas streaming vs restoring WAL files. The sequence was always this:

  1. Stop primary (A)
  2. Observe primary writes on final WAL file and it is archived
  3. Promote replica (B)
  4. Add recovery.conf to A for just WAL recovery and start.
In cases where the replica B was a streaming replica, upon promotion it would create a .partial file in the old timeline and then a history file in the new timeline and proceed. These files were then archived by wal-g and the new replica (A) would recover them and continue replication.

If replica B was not streaming to begin with (so it was just restoring and recovering WAL from archives), then upon promotion it would NOT create a .partial file. It would just create the .history file and open up. When A is then started in step 4, it would complain like this (in PG 9.6):

2020-08-08 19:13:43.337 UTC [17837] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2020-08-08 19:09:24 UTC

2020-08-08 19:13:44.580 UTC [17837] LOG:  restored log file "00000002.history" from archive

ERROR: 2020/08/08 19:13:45.213175 Archive '00000003.history' does not exist.
2020-08-08 19:13:45.214 UTC [17837] LOG:  entering standby mode

2020-08-08 19:13:45.676 UTC [17837] LOG:  restored log file "00000002.history" from archive
2020-08-08 19:13:46.327 UTC [17837] LOG:  restored log file "000000020000000000000006" from archive

2020-08-08 19:13:46.381 UTC [17837] LOG:  invalid xl_info in primary checkpoint record
2020-08-08 19:13:46.381 UTC [17837] PANIC:  could not locate a valid checkpoint record

2020-08-08 19:13:48.095 UTC [17836] LOG:  startup process (PID 17837) was terminated by signal 6: Aborted
2020-08-08 19:13:48.095 UTC [17836] LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure
2020-08-08 19:13:48.105 UTC [17836] LOG:  database system is shut down 

I even tested forcing an additional log switch from the new primary (which is the example you see above) but it still doesn't jive.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or expected behavior with non-streaming replicas but I believe it means that all of my old primaries need to be restored from new backups as the new primaries were all restore/recovery setup (due to VPN bandwidth limitations that made streaming difficult). Unless someone has a way forward?

Don.
--
Don Seiler
www.seiler.us

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