Re: [ADMIN] does wal archiving block the current client

On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 11:09 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> > On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 10:53 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> I think we just need a PostmasterIsAlive check in the per-file loop.
> 
> > ...which would mean the archiver would not outlive postmaster in the
> > event it crashes...which is exactly the time you want it to keep going.
> 
> Postmaster crashes are not a problem in practice; we've been careful to
> keep the postmaster doing so little that there's no material risk of it
> failing.  If the postmaster dies it's almost certainly because someone
> killed it, and you really want the child processes to close up shop too.
> 
> (If we did want the archiver to keep running, it shouldn't have any
> PostmasterIsAlive check at all; I can't see a reason why completing
> one iteration of the outer loop is a better time to stop than any
> other time.)

This does at least solve the fast restart problem, so look on -patches
in a few minutes.

--  Simon Riggs              EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com