Re: pg_stop_backup does not complete

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Joshua D. Drake  wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 09:45 -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> Simon, Fujii, All:
>>
>> While demoing HS/SR at SCALE, I ran into a problem which is likely to be
>> a commonly encountered bug when people first setup HS/SR.  Here's the
>> sequence:
>>
>> 1) Set up a brand new master with an archive-commmand and archive=on.
>>
>> 2) Start the master
>>
>> 3) Do a pg_start_backup()
>>
>> 4) Realize, based on log error messages, that I've misconfigured the
>> archive_command.
>>
>> 5) Attempt to shut down the master.  Master tells me that pg_stop_backup
>> must be run in order to shut down.
>
> If I issue a shutdown, PostgreSQL should do whatever it needs to do to
> shutdown; including issuing a pg_stop_backup.

Maybe.  But for sure, if it doesn't, and instead tells the user to
issue pg_stop_backup(), then pg_stop_backup() had better WORK when the
user tries to execute it.  I gather that the problem is that it has to
finish all that outstanding archiving before shutting down, in which
case Kevin's suggestion of having a command to abort the backup seems
reasonable.  I might call it pg_abort_backup() rather than
pg_fail_backup(), but...

...Robert