Re: Re: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review]

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 9:51 PM Fujii Masao wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila(at)huawei(dot)com>
> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 10:14 PM Fujii Masao wrote:
> >> When I removed postgresql.auto.conf and restarted the server,
> >> I got the following warning message. This is not correct because
> >> I didn't remove "auto.conf.d" from postgresql.conf. What I removed
> >> is only postgresql.auto.conf.
> >>
> >> WARNING: Default "auto.conf.d" is not present in postgresql.conf.
> >> Configuration parameters changed with SET PERSISTENT command will
> not
> >> be effective.
> >
> > How about changing it to below message:
> >
> > WARNING: File 'postgresql.auto.conf' is not accessible, either file
> > 'postgresql.auto.conf' or folder '%s' doesn't exist or default
> "auto.conf.d"
> > is not present in postgresql.conf.
> > Configuration parameters changed with SET PERSISTENT command will not
> be
> > effective.
>
> Or we should suppress such a warning message in the case where
> postgresql.auto.conf doesn't exist? SET PERSISTENT creates that
> file automatically if it doesn't exist. So we can expect that
> configuration
> parameters changed with SET PERSISTENT WILL be effective.

This Warning (message) can come during startup or reload, so if at that time
postgresql.auto.conf doesn't exist the parameters set by SET PERSISTENT
previous to startup or reload will not be effective.
So IMO, we can think to change part of this message as below:

"Configuration parameters changed before start of server with SET PERSISTENT
command will not be effective."
Any other idea for change in message?

> This warning message implies that the line "include_dir 'auto.conf.d'"
> must not be removed from postgresql.conf? If so, we should warn that
> in both document and postgresql.conf.sample?

I shall fix this as below:

Change current WARNING in postgresql.conf.sample as below:

# This includes the default configuration directory included to support
# SET PERSISTENT statement.
#
# WARNING: User should not remove below include_dir or directory
auto.conf.d,
as both are required to make SET PERSISTENT command work.
Any configuration parameter values specified after this line
# will override the values set by SET PERSISTENT statement.

Also Update this in runtime.sgml under heading "Starting the Database
Server"

> Or we should hard-code
> so that something like auto.conf.d is always included even when that
> include_dir directive doesn't exist?

I think this can create problem for user who intentionally wants to remove
this directory inclusion.

With Regards,
Amit Kapila.