Re: What is happening on buildfarm member baiji?

Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> What happens if we just "#ifndef WIN32" the setsockopt(SO_REUSEADDR)
>> call? I believe the reason that's in there is that some platforms will
>> reject bind() to a previously-used address for a TCP timeout delay after
>> a previous postmaster quit, but if that doesn't happen on Windows then
>> maybe all we need is to not set the option.

> Well it's worth checking. But whereas Windows breaking our understanding of
> what SO_REUSEADDR does doesn't actually violate any specification, not having
> a TIME_WAIT state at all would certainly violate the TCP spec. So it's
> somewhat unlikely that that's what they're doing. But anything's possible.

This is not a behavior required by the TCP spec AFAICS. Also, in a
quick test neither Linux nor HPUX appear to need SO_REUSEADDR --- on
both, I can restart the postmaster immediately without it.

[ digs in CVS and archives for awhile... ] An interesting historical
point is that the SO_REUSEADDR call did not appear in the original
Berkeley Postgres95 sources. It was added in rev 1.2 of pqcomm.c,
for which the only comment is

Finished merging in src/backend from Dr. George's source tree

so the fact is that that code has undergone approximately 0 specific
peer review. I'm beginning to wonder if we really need it at all.
I thought I recalled us having discussed the need for it once, but I
cannot find any trace of such a discussion.

regards, tom lane