Re: Should rename "startup process" to something else?

On 2021-Nov-23, Tom Lane wrote:

> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> writes:
> > On 2021-Nov-20, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >> Maybe something along those lines but using a dash/hyphen would work:
> >> e.g. wal-replayer
>
> > Yeah, the idea of a dash occurred to me too.
>
> Bad memories of uuid-ossp float up ... can we use underscore?

I don't object to an underscore, but it looks a bit uglier to me.
AFAIK the main problem with uuid-ossp was that it is used as an identifier, so
it required quoting, which won't be the case with this process name.

Anyway, as a second and separate point, should we rename the other WAL-related
process names to use the same character?

walreceiver -> wal_receiver / wal-receiver
walsender -> wal_sender / wal-sender
walwriter -> wal_writer / wal-writer.

I assume we would *not* rename other existing processes that already
have spaces in their names, such as "autovacuum launcher" to
"autovacuum_launcher", as that would be a net loss IMO.

Currently, the process list in an idle primary server looks like

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
alvherre 1091970 0.0 0.0 199608 22252 pts/0 S+ 12:22 0:00 /pgsql/install/master/bin/postmaster -p 55432
alvherre 1091983 0.0 0.0 199608 3644 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: checkpointer
alvherre 1091984 0.0 0.0 199608 5432 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: background writer
alvherre 1091986 0.0 0.0 199608 8956 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: walwriter
alvherre 1091987 0.0 0.0 200148 7988 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: autovacuum launcher
alvherre 1091988 0.0 0.0 54432 4156 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: stats collector
alvherre 1091989 0.0 0.0 200036 6416 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: logical replication launcher

I think this looks better:

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
alvherre 1091970 0.0 0.0 199608 22252 pts/0 S+ 12:22 0:00 /pgsql/install/master/bin/postmaster -p 55432
alvherre 1091983 0.0 0.0 199608 3644 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: checkpointer
alvherre 1091984 0.0 0.0 199608 5432 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: background writer
alvherre 1091986 0.0 0.0 199608 8956 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: wal-writer
alvherre 1091987 0.0 0.0 200148 7988 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: autovacuum launcher
alvherre 1091988 0.0 0.0 54432 4156 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: stats collector
alvherre 1091989 0.0 0.0 200036 6416 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 \_ postgres: logical replication launcher

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Álvaro Herrera Valdivia, Chile — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/