Re: backend hangs at immediate shutdown (Re: Back-branch update releases coming in a couple weeks)

The case where I wanted "routine" shutdown immediate (and I'm not sure I
ever actually got it) was when we were using IBM HA/CMP, where I wanted a
"terminate with a fair bit of prejudice".

If we know we want to "switch right away now", immediate seemed pretty much
right. I was fine with interrupting user sessions, and there wasn't as
much going on in the way of system background stuff back then.

I wasn't keen on waiting on much of anything. The background writer ought
to be keeping things from being too desperately out of date.

If there's stuff worth waiting a few seconds for, I'm all ears.

But if I have to wait arbitrarily long, colour me unhappy.

If I have to distinguish, myself, between a checkpoint nearly done flushing
and a backend that's stuck waiting forlornly for filesystem access, I'm
inclined to "kill -9" and hope recovery doesn't take *too* long on the next
node...

If shutting a server down in an emergency situation requires a DBA to look
in, as opposed to init.d doing its thing, I think that's pretty much the
same problem too.