Re: Remove lower limit on checkpoint_timeout?

On 12/23/16 6:12 PM, Michael Paquier wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 6:02 AM, David Steele <david(at)pgmasters(dot)net> wrote:
>> On 12/23/16 10:24 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
>>>> While it's not a particularly good idea to set it to 1s on a production
>>>> system, I don't see why we need to prevent that. It's not like 30s is
>>>> likely to be a good idea either.
>>>
>>>> Hence I'd like to set the lower limit to 1s.
>>>
>>> OK, but the documentation for it needs some work if you're going to
>>> do that. It only warns against making the timeout too large, not
>>> too small.
>>
>> +1 for the lower limit and the docs.
>
> I wish we were more loose regarding the limits of some parameters, see
> for example this recent thread about bgwriter ones:
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/f6e58a22-030b-eb8a-5457-f62fb08d701c@BlueTreble.com
> So +1 for lowering checkpoint_timeout, lower values are stupid for
> production systems, but not for developers.

What about a ./configure option that basically removes the min/max
limits of every setting where it makes sense? We can discuss what's
good for the user without being inconvenienced ourselves.

It's something I'd be willing to write a patch for if there's interest.
We can start with a few that have been discussed and work our way out
from there.

I agree with Andres about lowering the checkpoint_timeout limit in
general, but it seems like this would allow us to make development more
convenient even when we can't agree on changing limits for production
builds.

--
-David
david(at)pgmasters(dot)net