Re: How to detect if Postgres needs a restart when configuration changes

The idea of maintaining a list of parameters which require a restarts is ok for automation, since you usually only change a few of them. I also have a list of those parameters which can be changed by Ansible and I would like to detect if any of them changed, so I know I need to restart. Or it would be even better if Postgres can tell me if it requires a restart to apply all parameter changes, something like when you send SIGHUP and in the log it tells you that a parameter can only be changed after restart. But I can see that doesn't exist.

I have a relatively easy solution for this with Ansible. Ansible saves the values of all parameters which require a restart in one file and I just check if that file changed, but the problem with this is that if I change this file for any other reason, it could restart Postgres even if it doesn't need a restart. The right way is to parse the postgresql.conf and compare the values with pg_settings, but I was hoping to avoid that.