Thread: selective fsync?

I'm wondering how useful it would be if one could enable selective
fsync.  That would mean that although the database was running
async mode, the system tables and doing things like create index
would cause an fsync to enforce ordering in case of a crash.

This would prevent more serious problems like stray files in the
database while still allowing normal data to be managed quickly.

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

WAL should supersede all these concerns about fsync.  At the very least,
it changes the tradeoffs enough that there's no point in designing
performance improvements based on the old code...
        regards, tom lane