Re: Enabling Checksums

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com> wrote:
> Per-database does sound easier than per-table. I'd have to think about
> how that would affect shared catalogs though.
>
> For now, I'm leaning toward an offline utility to turn checksums on or
> off, called pg_checksums. It could do so lazily (just flip a switch to
> "enabling" in pg_control), or it could do so eagerly and turn it into a
> fully-protected instance.
>
> For the first patch, it might just be an initdb-time option for
> simplicity.

It'd be pretty easy to write a pg_checksums utilitys to turn checksums
on/off on a database that is shut down, since the hard part of all of
this is to change the state while the database is running.  But I
think even that doesn't need to be part of the first patch.  A small
patch that gets committed is better than a big one that doesn't.

-- 
Robert Haas
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