Re: [HACKERS] AdvanceXLInsertBuffer vs. WAL segment compressibility

Chapman Flack <chap@anastigmatix.net> writes:
> On 03/27/18 22:10, Michael Paquier wrote:
>> Here you go for one example:
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/pglesslog/

> In any case, from my study of the commit, it is hard for me to see an issue.
> The code comment says: "mark the header to indicate that WAL records
> beginning in this page have removable backup blocks."

Yeah, that commit just moved a flag from individual WAL records to page
headers, arguing that it was okay to assume that the same flag value
applies to all records on a page.  If there are no records in the page,
it doesn't matter what you think the flag value is.

A potentially stronger complaint is that WAL-reading tools might fail
outright on a page with an invalid header, but I'd say that's a robustness
issue that they'd need to address anyway.  There's never been any
guarantee that the trailing pages of a WAL segment are valid.

            regards, tom lane