Thread

Re: Changing the state of data checksums in a running cluster

SATYANARAYANA NARLAPURAM <satyanarlapuram@gmail.com> — 2026-05-05T20:05:51Z

Hi,

On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 12:45 PM SATYANARAYANA NARLAPURAM <
satyanarlapuram@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 12:19 PM Ayush Tiwari <ayushtiwari.slg01@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, 6 May 2026 at 00:38, Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> wrote:
>>
>>> > On 5 May 2026, at 17:21, Ayush Tiwari <ayushtiwari.slg01@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > I've a small concern in 0001.  The new guard uses only
>>> RelationNeedsWAL(reln),
>>> > but ProcessSingleRelationByOid() iterates all forks.  For unlogged
>>> relations,
>>> > the init fork is special, there are several existing call sites that
>>> preserve
>>> > WAL for INIT_FORKNUM, for example using
>>> >
>>> >   RelationNeedsWAL(rel) || forknum == INIT_FORKNUM
>>> >
>>> > and catalog/storage.c notes that unlogged init forks need WAL and sync.
>>> >
>>> > So I think the condition in ProcessSingleRelationFork() should
>>> preserve the
>>> > init-fork case, e.g.
>>> >
>>> >   if (RelationNeedsWAL(reln) || forkNum == INIT_FORKNUM)
>>> >       log_newpage_buffer(buf, false);
>>>
>>> Which failure scenario are you thinking about here?  When dealing with
>>> the
>>> catalog relation I can see the need but here we are reading, and
>>> writing, data
>>> pages.  In which case would we need to issue an FPI for an unlogged
>>> relation
>>> init fork? I might be missing something obvious here.
>>>
>>
>> The case I was thinking about is not the unlogged relation contents
>> themselves, but the init fork used as the reset template.  Some unlogged
>> indexes can have initialized pages in the init fork, and recovery later
>> copies
>> that fork to the main fork when resetting unlogged relations.
>>
>> So my concern was that, during online checksum enable, we might update the
>> checksum state of an init-fork page on the primary but not WAL-log an FPI
>> for
>> it because RelationNeedsWAL(reln) is false.  Then a standby, or recovery
>> after
>> a crash, could still have the old version of that init fork.  If that
>> fork is
>> later copied to the main fork after checksums are enabled, it might lead
>> to
>> checksum verification failures?
>>
>> Maybe there is another guarantee that makes this impossible, but I did
>> not see
>> it from the patch/test.  That is why I wondered whether the condition
>> should
>> preserve the existing special treatment for INIT_FORKNUM.
>>
>
> It is a bug in the code, I added a test in the v2 patch to test this
> scenario and the test
> failed earlier.
>

Please find the latest v3. Earlier I took dependency on amcheck and removed
it in v3
and instead added queries that forces necessary checks.

 Thanks,
Satya