Re: fsync-pgdata-on-recovery tries to write to more files than previously

Christoph Berg <myon(at)debian(dot)org> writes:
> Re: To Andres Freund 2015-05-24 <20150524075244(dot)GB27048(at)msg(dot)df7cb(dot)de>
>> Re: Andres Freund 2015-05-24 <20150524005245(dot)GD32396(at)alap3(dot)anarazel(dot)de>
>>> How about, to avoid masking actual problems, we have a more
>>> differentiated logic for the toplevel data directory?

> pg_log/ is also admin domain. What about only recursing into
> well-known directories + postgresql.auto.conf?

The idea that this code would know exactly what's what under $PGDATA
scares me. I can positively guarantee that it would diverge from reality
over time, and nobody would notice until it ate their data, failed to
start, or otherwise behaved undesirably.

pg_log/ is a perfect example, because that is not a hard-wired directory
name; somebody could point the syslogger at a different place very easily.
Wiring in special behavior for that name is just wrong.

I would *much* rather have a uniform rule for how to treat each file
the scan comes across. It might take some tweaking to get to one that
works well; but once we did, we could have some confidence that it
wouldn't break later.

regards, tom lane