Re: Turning recovery.conf into GUCs

On 11/21/2014 10:54 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * Josh Berkus (josh@agliodbs.com) wrote:
>>> Either way, from the code it is clear that we only stay in recovery if
>>> standby_mode is directly turned on.  This makes the whole check for a
>>> specially named file unnecessary, IMO: we should just check the value of
>>> standby_mode (which is off by default).
>>
>> So, what happens when someone does "pg_ctl promote"?  Somehow
>> standby_mode needs to get set to "off".  Maybe we write "standby_mode =
>> off" to postgresql.auto.conf?
> 
> Uhh, and then not work for the sane folks who disable
> postgresql.auto.conf?  No thanks..

Other ideas then, without reverting to the old system?  Being able to
promote servers over port 5432 will be a huge advantage for
container-based systems, so I don't want to give that up as a feature.

>> HOWEVER, there's a clear out for this with conf.d.  If we enable conf.d
>> by default, then we can simply put recovery settings in conf.d, and
>> since that specific file (which can have whatever name the user chooses)
>> will not be part of backups, it would have the same advantage as
>> recovery.conf, without the drawbacks.
> 
> conf.d is a possibility, but there may be environments where the
> postgres users doesn't have access to write into the conf.d directrory..
> Not sure if that'd be an issue for what you're suggesting but wanted to
> point it out.

It's not a real issue for any use-case I'm currently dealing with.
Would this approach break things for other people?

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com