Re: Re: ZeroFill(.../pg_xlog/xlogtemp.20148) failed: No such file or directory

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:

> Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> writes:
> > Probably true, but on Unix you certainly can't assume that write will
> > set errno if it does not return -1.
>
> Right.  The code you propose is isomorphic to what I suggested
> originally.  The question is which error condition should we assume
> if errno has not been set; is disk-full sufficiently likely to be the
> cause that we should just say that, or are there plausible alternatives?

Sufficiently likely?  Dunno.

I can think of some other possibilities.  If the file is on a file
system mounted via NFS or any other remote file system, you might get
any number of errors.  If there is a disk error after at least one
disk block has been copied and written, the kernel might return a
short count.  If the kernel is severely overloaded, and fails to
allocate a buffer after allocating and writing at least one buffer
successfully, it might return a short count.  If the file is very
large, and the write would push it over the maximum file size, you
might get a short count up to the maximum file size.  A similar case
might happen if the file is closed to the process resource limit
(RLIMIT_FSIZE).  I assume we can rule out cases like a write from a
buffer at the end of user memory such that some data can be copied
into kernel space and then a segmentation violation occurs--on some
systems that could cause a short count if a full block can be written
before the invalid memory is reached.

Obviously a full disk is the most likely case.  This is particularly
true if the write is for less than a full disk block.  But otherwise I
could believe that at least the disk error case might happen to
somebody someday.

Ian