Re: create tablespace fails silently, or succeeds improperly

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>> * Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>>> Anybody have a problem with adopting this behavior?
>
>>> Seems a bit surprising.
>
>> Yeahh..  I'm not really sure about mkdir -p type actions from a SQL
>> command.  Not entirely sure why but it doesn't feel 'right' to me.  I'd
>> rather have PG complain "that directory doesn't exist".
>
> OK.  Is there any value in doing mkdir -p in WAL-recovery execution of
> CREATE TABLESPACE but not regular execution?

I don't think so.  If someone creates a directory that is not fsync'd,
and then creates a subdirectory and puts a tablespace on it, and then
crashes after this has been WAL-logged but before the directory
entries have hit the disk, well, unlucky for them, but that's a
vanishingly rare situation.  There's no guarantee that we'd set
properties on the parent directory that would match the user's
expectation anyway, especially if SE-Linux or something is involved.

--
Robert Haas
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