• Heikki Linnakangas's avatar
    Also trigger restartpoints based on max_wal_size on standby. · d661532e
    Heikki Linnakangas authored
    When archive recovery and restartpoints were initially introduced,
    checkpoint_segments was ignored on the grounds that the files restored from
    archive don't consume any space in the recovery server. That was changed in
    later releases, but even then it was arguably a feature rather than a bug,
    as performing restartpoints as often as checkpoints during normal operation
    might be excessive, but you might nevertheless not want to waste a lot of
    space for pre-allocated WAL by setting checkpoint_segments to a high value.
    But now that we have separate min_wal_size and max_wal_size settings, you
    can bound WAL usage with max_wal_size, and still avoid consuming excessive
    space usage by setting min_wal_size to a lower value, so that argument is
    moot.
    
    There are still some issues with actually limiting the space usage to
    max_wal_size: restartpoints in recovery can only start after seeing the
    checkpoint record, while a checkpoint starts flushing buffers as soon as
    the redo-pointer is set. Restartpoint is paced to happen at the same
    leisurily speed, determined by checkpoint_completion_target, as checkpoints,
    but because they are started later, max_wal_size can be exceeded by upto
    one checkpoint cycle's worth of WAL, depending on
    checkpoint_completion_target. But that seems better than not trying at all,
    and max_wal_size is a soft limit anyway.
    
    The documentation already claimed that max_wal_size is obeyed in recovery,
    so this just fixes the behaviour to match the docs. However, add some
    weasel-words there to mention that max_wal_size may well be exceeded by
    some amount in recovery.
    d661532e
checkpointer.c 41 KB