Re: Bug with pg_ctl -w/wait and config-only directories

Excerpts from Bruce Momjian's message of lun oct 03 16:09:08 -0300 2011:

> Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> > My guess is that we could fix the simple case (the one that doesn't
> > involve a "-o datadir" option) with the parse-and-report option that has
> > been mentioned, and dictate that the other one doesn't work. That's
> > much less likely to cause a problem in practice.
>
> Well, we are unlikely to backpatch that parse-and-report option so it
> would be +2 years before it could be expected to work for even
> single-major-version upgrades. That just seems unworkable. Yeah. :-(

If we don't do anything, then it's never going to work. If we do it
today, we can have it working in the next release (9.2, right?).

"It doesn't work now but will work in the next release; and here's a
workaround that can get you out for now" is a useful if painful answer;
"it's never going to work" is a lot worse.

We've been in that sort of situation before, and the answer has always
been to fix the issue for future users. Assuming the world doesn't end
next year (a safe bet if you ask me), those are going to be more common
that current users, so it's worth the hassle.

> Yes, auto-creation of symlinks would be useful, but at that point pg_ctl
> and pg_upgrade would have to use the real data directory, so I again
> wonder what the config-only directory is getting us.

Not mixing config stuff (in /etc per FHS) with server data (/var/lib,
again per FHS). It's Debian policy anyway. I don't judge whether this
is sane or not. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

> Why were people not using pg_ctl? Because of the limitations which were
> fixed in PG 9.1? As Dave already said, windows already has to use pg_ctl.

As I said, Debian has their own version pg_ctlcluster because of their
work to allow multiple major versions to work simultaneously in the same
server. I dunno what about Gentoo.

--
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
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