Re: [HACKERS] Restricting maximum keep segments by repslots

Greetings,

* Andres Freund (andres@anarazel.de) wrote:
> On 2018-07-31 15:11:52 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 04:26:59PM +0900, Kyotaro HORIGUCHI wrote:
> > > Hello. This is the reabased version of slot-limit feature.
> > >
> > > This patch limits maximum WAL segments to be kept by replication
> > > slots. Replication slot is useful to avoid desync with replicas
> > > after temporary disconnection but it is dangerous when some of
> > > replicas are lost. The WAL space can be exhausted and server can
> > > PANIC in the worst case. This can prevent the worst case having a
> > > benefit from replication slots using a new GUC variable
> > > max_slot_wal_keep_size.
> >
> > Have you considered just using a boolean to control if max_wal_size
> > honors WAL preserved by replication slots, rather than creating the new
> > GUC max_slot_wal_keep_size?
>
> That seems like a bad idea. max_wal_size influences checkpoint
> scheduling - there's no good reason to conflate that with retention?

I agree that we shouldn't conflate checkpointing and retention.  What I
wonder about though is what value will wal_keep_segments have once this
new GUC exists..?  I wonder if we could deprecate it...  I wish we had
implemented repliation slots from the start with wal_keep_segments
capping the max WAL retained but that ship has sailed and changing it
now would break existing configurations.

Thanks!

Stephen