Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> writes:
> And AFAICS it is scary only because screwing that up will simply corrupt
> your database. Thus, a simple random number (okay, and a timestamp of
> initdb) in two files, one in $PGDATA and one in $PGXLOG would be a
> totally sufficient safety mechanism to prevent starting with the wrong
> XLOG directory.
> Can we get that instead of ripping out anything?
Sure, if someone wants to do that it'd go a long way towards addressing
the safety issues.
But given that, I think a GUC variable is the most appropriate control
mechanism; as someone else pointed out, we've worked long and hard to
make GUC useful and feature-ful, so it seems silly to invent new
configuration items that bypass GUC. The safety concerns were the main
reason I liked a symlink or separate file, but if we attack the safety
problem directly then we might as well go for convenience in how you
actually set the configuration value.
regards, tom lane