Re: Add recovery to pg_control and remove backup_label

Hi,

On Sunday, March 10th, 2024 at 4:47 AM, David Steele wrote:
> I've had a new idea which may revive this patch. The basic idea is to
> keep backup_label but also return a copy of pg_control from
> pg_stop_backup(). This copy of pg_control would be safe from tears and
> have a backupLabelRequired field set (as Andres suggested) so recovery
> cannot proceed without the backup label.
>
> So, everything will continue to work as it does now. But, backup
> software can be enhanced to write the improved pg_control that is
> guaranteed not to be torn and has protection against a missing backup label.
>
> Of course, pg_basebackup will write the new backupLabelRequired field
> into pg_control, but this way third party software can also gain
> advantages from the new field.

Bump on this idea.

Given the discussion in [1], even if it obviously makes sense to improve the in core backup capabilities, the more we go in that direction, the more we'll rely on outside orchestration.
So IMHO it also worth worrying about given more leverage to such orchestration tools. In that sense, I really like the idea to extend the backup functions.

More thoughts?

Thanks all,
Kind Regards,
--
Stefan FERCOT
Data Egret (https://dataegret.com)

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/lwXoqQdOT9Nw1tJIx_h7WuqMKrB1YMePQY99RFTZ87H7V52mgUJaSlw2WRbcOgKNUurF1yJqX3nqtZi4hJhtd3e_XlmLsLvnEtGXY-fZPoA%3D%40protonmail.com