Re: The case against multixact GUCs

On 04/16/2014 11:30 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> On 2014-04-16 11:25:49 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> On 04/16/2014 11:22 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
>>>> I'm serious. The multixact stuff has been broken since 9.3
>>>> was released, and it's *still* broken. We can't give users any guidance
>>>> or tools on how to set multixact stuff, and autovacuum doesn't handle it
>>>> properly.
>>>
>>> Sorry, but I think you're blowing some GUCs *WAY* out of proportion.
>>
>> I'm not talking about the GUCs.
>
> That was about:
> "We can't give users any guidance or tools on how to set multixact
> stuff, and autovacuum doesn't handle it properly."

OK. I will point out that if multixact freeze was an *intentional*
feature, we'd never have accepted it given the total lack of either
documentation or monitorability.

>
>> I'm talking about the data corruption bugs.
>
> That was covered by "at this point ripping this out seems likely to
> cause many more bugs than it would solve".

That's certainly possible. I just don't think the option of reversing
those patches should be off the table. Things have been bad enough that
that might be the best option.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com