Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Avoid marking buffer dirty when VACUUM has no work to do.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:32 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
>>> Avoid marking buffer dirty when VACUUM has no work to do.
>>> When wal_level = 'hot_standby' we touched the last page of the
>>> relation during a VACUUM, even if nothing else had happened.
>>> That would alter the LSN of the last block and set the mtime
>>> of the relation file unnecessarily. Noted by Thom Brown.
>
>> This doesn't look right to me --- you have not accounted for the
>> possibility that btpo_cycleid or BTP_HAS_GARBAGE is changed.
>
>> Also, I'm confused about the business of not setting the LSN.  Thom
>> claimed that he was seeing the page not change at all (or at least
>> md5sum of the file didn't change) despite mtime changing.  If we'd
>> been plastering a new LSN on the page each time, then that should
>> certainly not have been possible.  So I now think maybe we've
>> mis-analyzed what was happening in his example.
>
>> I think this requires more careful analysis.
>
> Ping?  If you don't respond, I'm going to take it on my own authority to
> revert this patch, because it's definitely broken as-is, and I don't
> think the consequences of not updating the page LSN have been thought
> through either.

Tom, waiting across a weekend isn't a cause for concern.

I made that change for you, so am happy to revoke for you also.

--
 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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