Re: Anti-critical-section assertion failure in mcxt.c reached by walsender

On Thu, May 06, 2021 at 09:43:32PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> 2. We evidently need to put a bit more effort into this error
> reporting logic. More generally, I wonder how we could audit
> the code for similar hazards elsewhere, because I bet there are
> some. (Or ... could it be sane to run functions included in
> the ereport's arguments in ErrorContext?)

Seems reasonable. I don't have good ideas for auditing; just making the
palloc work may be easier.

> 3. One might wonder why we're getting an fdatasync failure at
> all, when thorntail is configured to run with fsync = off.
> The answer to that one is that 008_fsm_truncation.pl takes it
> upon itself to force fsync = on, overriding the express wishes
> of the buildfarm owner, not to mention general project policy.
> AFAICT that was added with little if any thought in the initial
> creation of 008_fsm_truncation.pl, and I think we should take
> it out. There's certainly no visible reason for this one
> TAP script to be running with fsync on when no others do.

I've caught that one test taking ~10min due to its fsync use. If fsync=on
isn't important to the test, +1 for removing it.