Re: What happens when syslog gets blocked?

From: decibel <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org>
To: Bill Moran <wmoran(at)potentialtech(dot)com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, "pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org mailing list postgres" <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: What happens when syslog gets blocked?
Date: 2009-08-07 05:06:10
Message-ID: B8C408BD-805C-4172-B09C-2E07331E8E78@decibel.org
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On Aug 6, 2009, at 2:00 PM, Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>:
>
>> decibel <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org> writes:
>>> We recently had a problem with a database where the /var filesystem
>>> got corrupted. This appears to have seriously impacted the
>>> ability of
>>> STDERR from Postgres to get put out to disk, which ended up blocking
>>> backends.
>>
>>> Because of this we want to switch from using STDERR to using syslog,
>>> but I'm not sure if syslog() can end up blocking or not.
>>
>> syslog (at least in the implementations I'm familiar with) has the
>> opposite problem: when the going gets tough, it starts losing
>> messages.
>> I do not think you'll really be making your life better by switching.
>
> Well ... "life better" really depends on which failure scenario you're
> more comfortable with ... personally, I'd rather lose log messages
> than
> have the DB system go down. Of course, if auditing is critical to
> your
> scenario, then your priorities are different ...

Bingo. I'm thinking we should make mention of this in the docs...
--
Decibel!, aka Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

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