Re: [PATCHES] SRA Win32 sync() code

Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>

From: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>, PostgreSQL-patches <pgsql-patches@postgresql.org>, PostgreSQL Win32 port list <pgsql-hackers-win32@postgresql.org>
Date: 2003-11-16T17:19:05Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:

>Seriously though, if we can move the bulk of the writing work into
>background processes then I don't believe that there will be any
>significant penalty for regular backends.  And I believe that it would
>be a huge advantage from a correctness point of view if we could stop
>depending on sync().
>
Which function guarantees that renames of WAL files arrived on the disk? 
AFAIK sync() is the only function that guarantees that.

What about the sync app from sysinternals? It seems Mark Russinovich 
figured out how to implement sync on Win32:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#Sync

It requires administrative priveledges, but it shouldn't be that 
difficult to write a tiny service that runs in the LocalSystem account, 
listens to a pipe and syncs all disks when asked.

--
    Manfred