Re: Tuning for PostGreSQL Database

From: Jason Stone (freebsd-performance_at_dfmm.org)
Date: 07/22/03

  • Next message: Alexander Leidinger: "Re: Tuning for PostGreSQL Database" 
    Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 20:35:43 -0700 (PDT)
To: <freebsd-database@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-performance@freebsd.org>

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    > > > Softupdates on, async off. Softupdates is just a better async.
    > >
    > > postgresql fsync's all its files before returning from a commit in
    > > order to ensure durability, right? Does softupdates interfere with
    > > the functioning of sync(2)/fsync(2)?
    >
    > It can, yes, but that's the risk of soft updates. From tuning(7):

    Yes, I know - tuning(7) warns that writes may be delayed. But (data)
    writes are always delayed some, and fsync(2) doesn't say anything about a
    situation where fsync() would return success and the data would not
    actually be written out to disk.

    I feel like this is an extremely important point. If softupdates changes
    the semantics of sync(2)/fsync(2), then it absolutely has to be off for a
    postgresql server because postgresql counts on fsync in order to make its
    durability guarantees.

    Additionally, the manpages for sync/fsync should be updated, as I'm sure
    there are lots of other consumers of those calls, and, "these calls cause
    your dirty buffers to be flushed to disk... except if there's a global
    filesystem flag set, in which case they do absolutely nothing," is a
    pretty big omission, especially since softupdates is the default these
    days.

     -Jason

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