Re: BUG #4879: bgwriter fails to fsync the file in recovery mode

Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>>  I wouldn't consider that a
>> good idea from a reliability standpoint either --- the more writes to
>> pg_control, the more risk of fatal corruption of that file.
>
> We certainly update it an order of magnitude more often than before, but
> I don't think that's an issue. We're talking about archive recovery
> here. It's not like in normal operation where a corrupt pg_control file
> means that you lose your data. It will stop the server from starting up,
> but there's many other files that can be corrupt in a way that causes
> recovery to fail or stop too early.

If you still find the frequent pg_control updates unacceptable, we could
always move minRecoveryPoint to a file of its own..

--
  Heikki Linnakangas
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com