Force default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux.
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Force default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux. Recent versions of the Linux system header files cause xlogdefs.h to believe that open_datasync should be the default sync method, whereas formerly fdatasync was the default on Linux. open_datasync is a bad choice, first because it doesn't actually outperform fdatasync (in fact the reverse), and second because we try to use O_DIRECT with it, causing failures on certain filesystems (e.g., ext4 with data=journal option). This part of the patch is largely per a proposal from Marti Raudsepp. More extensive changes are likely to follow in HEAD, but this is as much change as we want to back-patch. Also clean up confusing code and incorrect documentation surrounding the fsync_writethrough option. Those changes shouldn't result in any actual behavioral change, but I chose to back-patch them anyway to keep the branches looking similar in this area. In 9.0 and HEAD, also do some copy-editing on the WAL Reliability documentation section. Back-patch to all supported branches, since any of them might get used on modern Linux versions.
Files
| Path | Change | +/− |
|---|---|---|
| doc/src/sgml/config.sgml | modified | +5 −6 |
| src/backend/storage/file/fd.c | modified | +5 −4 |
| src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample | modified | +1 −1 |
| src/include/access/xlogdefs.h | modified | +3 −3 |
| src/include/port/linux.h | modified | +8 −0 |
| src/include/port/win32.h | modified | +9 −5 |