Re: [HACKERS] Infrastructure changes for recovery

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 12:44 +0100, Simon Riggs wrote:
> I would like to propose some changes to the infrastructure for recovery.
> These changes are beneficial in themselves, but also form the basis for
> other work we might later contemplate.
>
> Currently
> * the startup process performs restartpoints during recovery
> * the death of the startup process is tied directly to the change of
> state in the postmaster following recovery
>
> I propose to
> * have startup process signal postmaster when it starts Redo phase (if
> it starts it)

> Decoupling things in this way allows us to
> 1. arrange for the bgwriter to start during Redo, so it can:
> i) clean dirty blocks for the startup process
> ii) perform restartpoints in background
>   Both of these aspects will increase performance of recovery

Taking into account comments from Tom and Alvaro

Included patch with the following changes:

* new postmaster mode known as consistent recovery, entered only when
recovery passes safe/consistent point. InRedo is now set in all
processes when started/connected in consistent recovery mode.

* bgwriter and stats process starts in consistent recovery mode.
bgwriter changes mode when startup process completes.

* bgwriter now performs restartpoints and also cleans shared_buffers
while the startup process performs redo apply

* recovery.conf parameter log_restartpoints is now deprecated, since
function overlaps with log_checkpoints too much. I've kept the
distinction between restartpoints and checkpoints in code, to avoid
convoluted code. Minor change, not critical.

[Replying to one of Alvaro's other comments: Startup process still uses
XLogReadBuffer. I'm not planning on changing that either, at least not
in this patch.]

Patch doesn't conflict with rmgr plugin patch.

Passes make check, but that's easy.
Various other tests all seem to be working.

--
 Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com
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