Thread

Re: Implement waiting for wal lsn replay: reloaded

Xuneng Zhou <xunengzhou@gmail.com> — 2026-05-01T02:44:00Z

Hi Alexander,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 5:01 AM Alexander Korotkov <aekorotkov@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 7:03 AM Xuneng Zhou <xunengzhou@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 2:46 AM Alexander Korotkov <aekorotkov@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > The updated patchset is attached.  It includes improved coverage as
> > > suggested by Andres upthread.  And documentation that WAIT FOR LSN is
> > > timeline-blind (per off-list discussion with Xuneng).
> >
> > I revised the test patch 6 to make the new cases check the intended
> > WAIT FOR behavior more directly, and to avoid cases where the test
> > could pass for the wrong reason.
> >
> > The fresh walreceiver restart test now distinguishes what we can
> > observe from what is only covered indirectly.
> > 'pg_last_wal_receive_lsn()' reports 'flushedUpto', not 'writtenUpto',
> > so the test now describes that state accurately and covers
> > 'writtenUpto' through the 'standby_write' result. This seems
> > appropriate to me since the two positions are seeded in the places and
> > conditions. Test for flush lsn should also help verify write lsn.
> >
> > The fencepost tests were split by the actual frontier being tested.
> > 'standby_replay' uses 'pg_last_wal_replay_lsn()', while
> > 'standby_flush' uses 'pg_last_wal_receive_lsn()'. This avoids treating
> > a replay-derived LSN as if it were also the exact write/flush
> > boundary. I left 'standby_write' out of the exact fencepost helper
> > because its frontier is not SQL-visible once walreceiver is stopped.
> > The async wakeup case now starts the waiter while replay is still
> > paused, so it must actually sleep before replay and walreceiver are
> > allowed to advance.
> >
> > The cascading timeline-switch test now checks the 'WAIT FOR ...
> > NO_THROW' status from background psql stdout. The previous log-marker
> > pattern could pass after unexpected returned status, includingn
> > 'timeout', because the following statement would still run. The
> > 'received_tli > 1' check remains, but only as confirmation that the
> > downstream followed the new timeline; the 'success' status proves the
> > wait completed as intended.
> >
> > Please check it.
>
> LGTM, I've added some comments for new functions in 0006.  I propose
> to push this patchset.  Probably something is still missing and we
> will have to go back to this.  But it seems to make a lot of aspects
> much better.
>

I reviewed the patchset and found a potential issue in the test for patch
5, similar to the log-checking problem in the cascading timeline-switch
test. I've applied a minor fix to address it. Other parts LGTM.

Best,
Xuneng