Re: "clearing" a relation file !

On Sat, May 14, 2022 at 1:46 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> "Michel SALAIS" <msalais(at)msym(dot)fr> writes:
> > \! dd if=/dev/zero of=$file_path bs=1024 count=100
>
> The other problem with this specific test is that an all-zero
> page is considered to be a valid state. You may consider that
> a problem or not, but we're quite unlikely to change it, because
> doing so would create false failure reports. See the mechanisms
> around file extension.
>
>
Should this detail be mentioned in the docs?

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/checksums.html

Namely (and not confirmed):

"A failure mode that produces empty pages will not be detected by this
mechanism during normal server operation, but the pg_checksums application
will since all normal usage of empty pages is restricted to runtime
transient state."

David J.