Re: Teaching pg_receivexlog to follow timeline switches

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<hlinnakangas@vmware.com> wrote:
> I'd prefer to leave the .partial suffix in place, as the segment really
> isn't complete. It doesn't make a difference when you recover to the latest
> timeline, but if you have a more complicated scenario with multiple
> timelines that are still "alive", ie. there's a server still actively
> generating WAL on that timeline, you'll easily get confused.
>
> As an example, imagine that you have a master server, and one standby. You
> maintain a WAL archive for backup purposes with pg_receivexlog, connected to
> the standby. Now, for some reason, you get a split-brain situation and the
> standby server is promoted with new timeline 2, while the real master is
> still running. The DBA notices the problem, and kills the standby and
> pg_receivexlog. He deletes the XLOG files belonging to timeline 2 in
> pg_receivexlog's target directory, and re-points pg_recevexlog to the master
> while he re-builds the standby server from backup. At that point,
> pg_receivexlog will start streaming from the end of the zero-padded segment,
> not knowing that it was partial, and you have a hole in the archived WAL
> stream. Oops.
>
> The DBA could avoid that by also removing the last WAL segment on timeline
> 1, the one that was partial. But it's really not obvious that there's
> anything wrong with that segment. Keeping the .partial suffix makes it
> clear.

I shudder at the idea that the DBA is manually involved in any of this.

-- 
Robert Haas
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