While working on an idea from another thread [0], I noticed that each of
max_connections, max_worker_process, max_autovacuum_workers, and
max_wal_senders have a check hook that verifies the sum of those GUCs does
not exceed a certain value. Then, in InitializeMaxBackends(), we do the
same check once more. Not only do the check hooks seem redundant, but I
think they might sometimes be inaccurate since some values might not yet be
initialized. Furthermore, the error message is not exactly the most
descriptive:
$ pg_ctl -D . start -o "-c max_connections=262100 -c max_wal_senders=10000"
FATAL: invalid value for parameter "max_wal_senders": 10000
The attached patch removes these hooks and enhances the error message to
look like this:
FATAL: too many backends configured
DETAIL: "max_connections" (262100) plus "autovacuum_max_workers" (3) plus "max_worker_processes" (8) plus
"max_wal_senders"(10000) must be less than 262142.
The downside of this change is that server startup progresses a little
further before it fails, but that might not be too concerning given this
_should_ be a relatively rare occurrence.
Thoughts?
[0] https://postgr.es/m/20240618213331.ef2spg3nasksisbi%40awork3.anarazel.de
--
nathan
