>> The checkpointer is entirely incapable of either detecting the problem
>> (it doesn't have enough infrastructure to examine pg_database in a
>> reasonable way) or preventing backends from doing anything if it did
>> know there was a problem.
>
> Well, I guess I meant 'some regularly running process'...
>
>>>I think people'd rather their db just stopped accepting new transactions
>>>rather than just losing data...
>>
>> Not being able to issue new transactions *is* data loss --- how are you
>> going to get the system out of that state?
>
> Not allowing any transactions except a vacuum...
>
>> autovacuum is the correct long-term solution to this, not some kind of
>> automatic hara-kiri.
>
> Yeah, seems like it should really happen soon...
>
> Chris
Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't the prospect of data loss (even
in the presense of admin ignorance) be something that should be
unacceptable? Certainly within the realm "normal PostgreSQL" operation.