Re: [BUG]: the walsender does not update its IO statistics until it exits

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 01:42:08PM +0000, Bertrand Drouvot wrote:
> Now we can see that the numbers increased for the relation object and that we
> get non zeros numbers for the wal object too (which makes fully sense).
>
> With the attached patch applied, we would get the same numbers already in
> step 4. (means the stats are flushed without the need to wait for the walsender
> to exit).

@@ -2793,6 +2794,12 @@ WalSndLoop(WalSndSendDataCallback send_data)
if (pq_flush_if_writable() != 0)
WalSndShutdown();

+ /*
+ * Report IO statistics
+ */
+ pgstat_flush_io(false);
+ (void) pgstat_flush_backend(false, PGSTAT_BACKEND_FLUSH_IO);
+
/* If nothing remains to be sent right now ... */
if (WalSndCaughtUp && !pq_is_send_pending())
{

That's bad, worse for a logical WAL sender, because it means that we
have no idea what kind of I/O happens in this process until it exits,
and logical WAL senders could loop forever, since v16 where we've
begun tracking I/O.

A non-forced periodic flush like you are proposing here sounds OK to
me, but the position of the flush could be positioned better in the
loop. If there is a SIGUSR2 (aka got_SIGUSR2 is true), WAL senders
would shut down, so it seems rather pointless to do a flush just
before exiting the process in WalSndDone(), no? I'd suggest to move
the flush attempt closer to where we wait for some activity, just
after WalSndKeepaliveIfNecessary().
--
Michael