Re: Server instrumentation for 8.1

Josh Berkus wrote:

>>- dbsize has been in contrib for a long time, though it appears to me as
>>quite a basic functionality to find out about storage needs.
> 
> 
> Although not needed so much if the new system views are approved; we have a 
> view that calculates database size. 

First, as some other msg states the views will estimate the sizes, 
dbsize uses actual file sizes. Second, in contrast to CKL, I would *not* 
use these fancy new system views, because they mean yet another 
dependency for pgAdmin.


> Not that multiple options isn't cool.

What do you mean? Those views aren't an option for me.


> 
>>- The superuser only generic file functions in the admin package have
>>been posted for 8.0, but where (more or less ) silently dropped. These
>>functions allow pgadmin to display the server logs, as well as editing
>>pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf without console access to
>>whatever-pgsql-is-running-on.  I'd like to see this at least as contrib
>>module (the functions are probably safer than pl_sh).
> 
> 
> Heck, I didn't even see these.  I was going to write some in pgperl for my own 
> use.  These seem potentially very dangerous though, so we wouldn't want them 
> installed by default.

Not more dangerous than "drop table pg_class". The file functions are 
restricted to the cluster directory.


>>- There was a pg_kill_backend function in pre-8.0, but it was dropped
>>because "it's too dangerous". Incidentially, I've been in the situation
>>more than once where I needed to kill a backend process that was running
>>wild; alternatively, I'd have to shutdown the whole server. I had to do
>>this on the linux console with kill -9 (fortunately I did have access),
>>or using the win32 task manager (same). This appears even more error
>>prone to me than to point to the malicious process and kill it (through
>>pgadmin/pg_kill_backend)
> 
> 
> Certainly.  But this was dropped because Tom couldn't get the bugs out (as I 
> recall) and make it "safe" to use, even for the superuser. 

Hm, don't remember that, AFAIR it was removed after a discussion between 
Tom and Dave that kill -9 would stress a code path that still isn't 
elaborated too much. But in the situations mentioned above, I took the 
risk and would like a function for that.


Regards,
Andreas