Re: WAL file location

Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org> writes:
> I've developed patches to be able to specify the location of the WAL
> directory, with the default location being where it is now. The patches
> define a new environment variable PGXLOG (a la PGDATA) and postmaster,
> postgres, initdb and pg_ctl have been taught to recognize a new command
> line switch "-X" a la "-D".

Uh ... if I randomly modify PGXLOG and restart the postmaster, what
happens?  Unless you've added code to *move* pg_xlog, this doesn't seem
like a good idea.

More generally, I do not like depending on postmaster environment
variables --- our experience with environment variables for database
locations has been uniformly bad, and so ISTM that extending that
mechanism into pg_xlog is exactly the wrong direction to head.

The current mechanism for moving pg_xlog around is to create a symlink
from $PGDATA/pg_xlog to someplace else.  I'd be all in favor of creating
some code to help automate moving pg_xlog that way, but I don't think
introducing an environment variable will improve matters.

> I'm intending to head towards finer control of locations of tables and
> indices next by implementing some notion of named storage area, perhaps
> including the "tablespace" nomenclature though it would not be the same
> thing as in Oracle since it would not be fixed size but more akin to the
> "secondary locations" that we support now for entire databases.

The existing secondary-location mechanism is horrible.  Please do not
emulate it...
        regards, tom lane