Hackers,
In versions < PG12 recovery_target_action has a behavior that appears to
be a bug, or is at least undocumented. If hot_standby = off and
recovery_target_action is not specified then the cluster will promote
when the target is found rather than shutting down as the documentation
seems to indicate. If recovery_target_action is explicitly set to pause
then the cluster will shutdown as expected.
In PG12 the shutdown occurs even when recovery_target_action is not
explicitly set. This seems like good behavior and it matches the
documentation as I read it.
The question for the old versions: is this something that should be
fixed in the code or in the documentation?
My vote is to make this explicit in the documentation, since changing
the recovery behavior in old versions could lead to nasty surprises.
Regards,
--
-David
david@pgmasters.net