Re: New and interesting replication issues with 9.2.8 sync rep

On 2014-05-05 10:16:27 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 05/03/2014 01:07 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> > On 2014-05-02 18:57:08 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> >> Just got a report of a replication issue with 9.2.8 from a community member:
> >>
> >> Here's the sequence:
> >>
> >> 1) A --> B (sync rep)
> >>
> >> 2) Shut down B
> >>
> >> 3) Shut down A
> >>
> >> 4) Start up B as a master
> >>
> >> 5) Start up A as sync replica of B
> >>
> >> 6) A successfully joins B as a sync replica, even though its transaction
> >> log is 1016 bytes *ahead* of B.
> >>
> >> 7) Transactions written to B all hang
> >>
> >> 8) Xlog on A is now corrupt, although the database itself is OK
> > 
> > This is fundamentally borked practice.
> > 
> >> Now, the above sequence happened because of the user misunderstanding
> >> what sync rep really means.  However, A should not have been able to
> >> connect with B in replication mode, especially in sync rep mode; that
> >> should have failed.  Any thoughts on why it didn't?
> > 
> > I'd guess that B, while starting up, has written further WAL records
> > bringing it further ahead of A.
> 
> Apparently not; from what I've seen pg_stat_replication even *shows*
> that the replica is ahead of the master.  Futher, Postgres should have
> recognized that there was a timeline branch point before A's last
> record, no?

There wasn't any timeline increase because - as far as I understand the
above - there wasn't any promotion. The cluster was shut down and
recovery.conf was created/removed respectively.

To me this is a operator error. We could try to defend against it more
vigorously, but thats's hard to do without breaking actual usecases.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

-- Andres Freund                       http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training &
Services