Re: pg_upgrade --copy-file-range

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 1:22 PM Tomas Vondra
<tomas.vondra@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> Right, this will happen:
>
>   pg_combinebackup: error: unable to use accelerated copy when manifest
>   checksums are to be calculated. Use --no-manifest
>
> Are you saying we should just silently override the copy method and do
> the copy block by block?

Yes.

> I'm not strongly opposed to that, but it feels
> wrong to just ignore that the user explicitly requested cloning, and I'm
> not sure why should this be different from any other case when the user
> requests incompatible combination of options and/or options that are not
> supported on the current configuration.

I don't feel like copying block-by-block when that's needed to compute
a checksum is ignoring what the user requested. I mean, if we'd had to
perform reconstruction rather than copying an entire file, we would
have done that regardless of whether --clone had been there, and I
don't see why the need-to-compute-a-checksum case is any different. I
think we should view a flag like --clone as specifying how to copy a
file when we don't need to do anything but copy it. I don't think it
should dictate that we're not allowed to perform other processing when
that other processing is required.

From my point of view, this is not a case of incompatible options
having been specified. If you specify run pg_basebackup with both
--format=p and --format=t, those are incompatible options; the backup
can be done one way or the other, but not both at once. But here
there's no such conflict. Block-by-block copying and fast-copying can
happen as part of the same operation, as in the example that I showed,
where some files need the block-by-block copying and some can be
fast-copied. The user is entitled to specify which fast-copying method
they would like to have used for the files where fast-copying is
possible without getting a failure just because it isn't possible for
every single file.

Or to say it the other way around, if there's 1 file that needs to be
copied block by block and 99 files that can be fast-copied, you want
to force the user to the block-by-block method for all 100 files. I
want to force the use of the block-by-block method for the 1 file
where that's the only valid method, and let them choose what they want
to do for the other 99.

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com