Re: Reviewing temp_tablespaces GUC patch

Bernd Helmle <mailings@oopsware.de> writes:
> --On Freitag, Mai 25, 2007 10:49:29 +0000 Jaime Casanova 
> <systemguards@gmail.com> wrote:
>> No, because the RemovePgTempFiles() call in PostmasterMain() will
>> remove all tmp files at startup.

> Hmm isn't RemovePgTempFiles() called on postmaster startup only? What will 
> happen if a temp tablespace is out of disk space, and the backend leaves 
> all previously created temp files there? Under these assumption we'll need 
> to restart the postmaster to get a clean tablespace ready to drop...

Theoretically, a backend will always remove its temp files during
transaction abort, so the only case that is really of concern is a
backend crashing before it can get around to doing that.  However, I
believe we do not call RemovePgTempFiles during a crash recovery cycle;
this is intentional on the theory that the temp files might contain
useful debugging clues.  So there is a potential problem there.
Not sure how important it really is though --- neither crashes nor
tablespace drops ought to be so common that we need a really nice
solution.
        regards, tom lane