Re: add log messages when replication slots become active and inactive (was Re: Is it worth adding ReplicationSlot active_pid to ReplicationSlotPersistentData?)

On Fri, Mar 24, 2023 at 3:05 PM Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> wrote:
>
> On 2023-Mar-23, Greg Stark wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 23 Mar 2023 at 23:30, Bharath Rupireddy
> > <bharath(dot)rupireddyforpostgres(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > + ereport(log_replication_commands ? LOG : DEBUG3,
> > > > + (errmsg("acquired physical replication slot \"%s\"",
> > > > + slotname)));
> >
> > So this is just a bit of bike-shedding but I don't feel like these log
> > messages really meet the standard we set for our logging. Like what
> > did the acquiring? What does "acquired" actually mean for a
> > replication slot? Is there not any meta information about the
> > acquisition that can give more context to the reader to make this
> > message more meaningful?
> >
> > I would expect a log message like this to say, I dunno, something like
> > "physical replication slot \"%s\" acquired by streaming TCP connection
> > to 192.168.0.1:999 at LSN ... with xxxMB of logs to read"
>
> Hmm, I don't disagree with your argument in principle, but I think this
> proposal is going too far. I think stating the PID is more than
> sufficient.

Do you mean to have something like "physical/logical replication slot
\"%s\" is released/acquired by PID %d", MyProcPid? If yes, the
log_line_prefix already contains PID right? Or do we want to cover the
cases when someone changes log_line_prefix to not contain PID?

> And I don't think we need this patch to go great lengths to
> explain what acquisition is, either; I mean, maybe that's a good thing
> to have, but then that's a different patch.
>
> > I even would be wondering if the other end shouldn't also be logging a
> > corresponding log and we shouldn't be going out of our way to ensure
> > there's enough information to match them up and presenting them in a
> > way that makes that easy.
>
> Hmm, you should be able to match things using the connection
> information. I don't think the slot acquisition operation in itself is
> that important.

Yeah, the intention of the patch is to track the patterns of slot
acquisitions and releases to aid analysis. Of course, this information
alone may not help but when matched with others in the logs, it will.

The v9 patch was failing because I was using MyReplicationSlot after
it got reset by slot release, attached v10 patch fixes it.

--
Bharath Rupireddy
PostgreSQL Contributors Team
RDS Open Source Databases
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com