Re: no universally correct setting for fsync

--On 7. Mai 2010 09:48:53 -0500 Kevin Grittner
<Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> wrote:

> I think it goes beyond "tweaking" -- I think we should have a bald
> statement like "don't turn this off unless you're OK with losing the
> entire contents of the database cluster." A brief listing of some
> cases where that is OK might be illustrative.
>

+1

> I never meant to suggest any statement in that section is factually
> wrong; it's just all too rosy, leading people to believe it's no big
> deal to turn it off.

I think one mistake in this paragraph is the passing mention of
"performance". I've seen installations in the past with fsync=off only
because the admin was pressured to get instantly "more speed" out of the
database (think of "fast_mode=on"). In my opinion, phrases like
"performance penalty" are misleading, if you need that setting in 99% of
all use cases for reliable operation.

I've recently even started to wonder if the performance gain with fsync=off
is still that large on modern hardware. While testing large migration
procedures to a new version some time ago (on an admitedly fast storage) i
forgot here and then to turn it off, without a significant degradation in
performance.

--
Thanks

Bernd