Re: The danger of deleting backup_label

At Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:16:42 -0400, David Steele <david(at)pgmasters(dot)net> wrote in
> Given that the above can't be back patched, I'm thinking we don't need
> backup_label at all going forward. We just write the values we need
> for recovery into pg_control and return *that* from pg_backup_stop()
> and tell the user to store it with their backup. We already have
> "These files are vital to the backup working and must be written byte
> for byte without modification, which may require opening the file in
> binary mode." in the documentation so dealing with pg_control should
> not be a problem. pg_control also has a CRC so we will know if it gets
> munged.

I'm somewhat perplexed regarding the objective of this thread.

This thread began with the intent of preventing users from removing
the backup_label from a backup. At the beginning, the proposal aimed
to achieve this by injecting an invalid value to pg_control file
located in the generated backup. However, this (and previous) proposal
seems to deviate from that initial objective. It now eliminates the
need to be concerned about the pg_control version that is coped into
the generated backup. However, if someone removes the backup_label
from a backup, the initial concerns could still surface.

regards.

--
Kyotaro Horiguchi
NTT Open Source Software Center