Re: initdb and fsync

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

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2012-01-28T18:18:00Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> I'm curious what problem we're actually solving here, though. I've run 
> the buildfarm countless thousands of times on different VMs, and five of 
> my seven current animals run in VMs, and I don't think I've ever seen a 
> failure ascribable to inadequately synced files from initdb.

Yeah.  Personally I would be sad if initdb got noticeably slower, and
I've never seen or heard of a failure that this would fix.

I wonder whether it wouldn't be sufficient to call sync(2) at the end,
anyway, rather than cluttering the entire initdb codebase with fsync
calls.

			regards, tom lane