Force default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux.
Recent versions of the Linux system header files cause xlogdefs.h to
believe that open_datasync should be the default sync method, whereas
formerly fdatasync was the default on Linux. open_datasync is a bad
choice, first because it doesn't actually outperform fdatasync (in fact
the reverse), and second because we try to use O_DIRECT with it, causing
failures on certain filesystems (e.g., ext4 with data=journal option).
This part of the patch is largely per a proposal from Marti Raudsepp.
More extensive changes are likely to follow in HEAD, but this is as much
change as we want to back-patch.
Also clean up confusing code and incorrect documentation surrounding the
fsync_writethrough option. Those changes shouldn't result in any actual
behavioral change, but I chose to back-patch them anyway to keep the
branches looking similar in this area.
In 9.0 and HEAD, also do some copy-editing on the WAL Reliability
documentation section.
Back-patch to all supported branches, since any of them might get used
on modern Linux versions.
Branch
------
master
Details
-------
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=576477e73c4a9cb32c7471c1cec354fd5328140e
Modified Files
--------------
doc/src/sgml/config.sgml | 39 ++++++++--------
doc/src/sgml/wal.sgml | 61 +++++++++++++------------
src/backend/storage/file/fd.c | 9 ++--
src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample | 2 +-
src/include/access/xlogdefs.h | 6 +-
src/include/port/linux.h | 8 +++
src/include/port/win32.h | 14 ++++--
7 files changed, 77 insertions(+), 62 deletions(-)
