pgsql: Reword messages about impending (M)XID exhaustion. - Mailing list pgsql-committers

From Robert Haas
Subject pgsql: Reword messages about impending (M)XID exhaustion.
Date
Msg-id E1qslE5-0010tt-3F@gemulon.postgresql.org
Whole thread Raw
List pgsql-committers
Reword messages about impending (M)XID exhaustion.

First, we shouldn't recommend switching to single-user mode, because
that's terrible advice. Especially on newer versions where VACUUM
will enter emergency mode when nearing (M)XID exhaustion, it's
perfectly fine to just VACUUM in multi-user mode. Doing it that way
is less disruptive and avoids disabling the safeguards that prevent
actual wraparound, so recommend that instead.

Second, be more precise about what is going to happen (when we're
nearing the limits) or what is happening (when we actually hit them).
The database doesn't shut down, nor does it refuse all commands. It
refuses commands that assign whichever of XIDs and MXIDs are nearly
exhausted.

No back-patch. The existing hint that advises going to single-user
mode is sufficiently awful advice that removing it or changing it
might be justifiable even though we normally avoid changing
user-facing messages in back-branches, but I (rhaas) felt that it
was better to be more conservative and limit this fix to master
only. Aside from the usual risk of breaking translations, people
might be used to the existing message, or even have monitoring
scripts that look for it.

Alexander Alekseev, John Naylor, Robert Haas, reviewed at various
times by Peter Geoghegan, Hannu Krosing, and Andres Freund.

Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CA+TgmoZBg95FiR9wVQPAXpGPRkacSt2okVge+PKPPFppN7sfnQ@mail.gmail.com

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
https://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2406c4e34ccca697bd5a221f8375f335b5841dea

Modified Files
--------------
doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml          | 11 ++++++-----
src/backend/access/transam/multixact.c |  4 ++--
src/backend/access/transam/varsup.c    | 16 ++++++++--------
3 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)


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