Last week we have seen a problem with some horribly configured machine.
The disk filled up (bad FSM ;) ) and once this happened the sysadmi killed the system (-9).
After two days PostgreSQL has still not started up and they tried to restart it again and again making sure that the consistency check was started over an over again (thus causing more and more downtime).
From the admi point of view there was no way to find out whether the machine was actually dead or still recovering.
Here is a small patch which issues a log message indicating that the recovery process can take ages.
Maybe this can prevent some admis from interrupting the recovery process.
In our case, the recovery process took 3.5 days !!
best regards,
hans
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Cybertec Schönig & Schönig GmbH
PostgreSQL Solutions and Support
Gröhrmühlgasse 26, 2700 Wiener Neustadt
Tel: +43/1/205 10 35 / 340