Re: Allow some recovery parameters to be changed with reload

Hello

> Even if PITR is commanded, crash recovery can run before starting
> archive recovery if the server was not gracefully shut down.

Hmm... Still not sure how it's possible. Both readRecoverySignalFile and validateRecoveryParameters are called early in
StartupXLOG.If PITR was commanded - we follow PITR logic. If requested recovery stop point is before consistent
recoverypoint we shutdown the database with another FATAL.
 
I mean such place:

https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=blob;f=src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c;h=9d3f1c12fc56f61da4d2b9bf08c54d31b9757ef7;hb=29be9983a64c011eac0b9ee29895cce71e15ea77#l6891
If we start recovery by any reason and a archive recovery was requested - we start archive recovery instead of crash
recovery.

> I don't know. I just think that it is not proper that "ALTER SYSTEM" +
> config-reload causes server stop.

I got your point. How about pause the recovery process? Like proposed in https://commitfest.postgresql.org/30/2489/
For example,
* restore_command become empty on SIGHUP while PITR was requested
* we set recovery to pause
* if user call pg_wal_replay_resume and restore_command is still empty - we shutdown the database
* if user fix restore_command - we continue restore.

But it seems complicated if we just don't need special handling here. We still require restore_command to be set to
startrecovery. In case the user later wants to set the restore_command to empty - let's assume that's correct (FATAL if
PITRtarget is after the end of local pg_wal, promote otherwise).
 

>>  Why not use local pg_wal? There may be already enough WAL.
>
> Mmm. If the file to read is in pg_wal, restore_command won't be
> executed in the first place?

Startup process will call restore_command in any case regardless of pg_wal content. (xlogarchive.c,
RestoreArchivedFile)

> * When doing archive recovery, we always prefer an archived log file even
> * if a file of the same name exists in XLOGDIR.  The reason is that the
> * file in XLOGDIR could be an old, un-filled or partly-filled version
> * that was copied and restored as part of backing up $PGDATA.

regards, Sergei