Re: hba load error and silent mode

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> It might be that a reasonable solution on our end would be for
>> pmdaemonize to point stdout/stderr someplace other than /dev/null,
>> perhaps "$PGDATA/postmaster.log"? Of course, it's not clear what
>> we're supposed to do if that open() fails ...

> Well, yes, but that is at least a comparatively low risk, certainly much
> much lower than the risk having a faulty hba file, for example.

> This sounds like a reasonable approach.

Actually, if people are happy with that basic behavior, I think we could
make it robust: open /dev/null and $PGDATA/postmaster.log *before* we
fork away from the terminal session. On failure, report that and exit(1).
On success, go ahead and fork. Failure of the subsequent dup2() calls
should be just about impossible --- in fact, so far as I can tell from
the SUS documents, if we put in a loop for EINTR then there is no
documented way for them to fail.

If no objections, I'll be happy to make this happen.

regards, tom lane