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Re: allow changing autovacuum_max_workers without restarting

Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>

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From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, "Imseih (AWS), Sami" <simseih@amazon.com>, Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2025-01-06T22:15:25Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

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On Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 03:50:24PM -0600, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> I'm obviously biased, but I think it would be unfortunate to block features
> like this one because of low settings that would otherwise be unsuitable
> for any reasonable production workload.  If we do want to at least support
> check-world on these systems, another option could be to simply lower the
> default of autovacuum_worker_slots to 7 (or maybe lower).  Of course, that
> only helps until the next time more semaphores are required, but that's not
> a new problem.

I've attached a patch to lower the default to 5.  That at least gives a
little bit of wiggle room for autovacuum_max_workers (and for a couple of
new auxiliary processes).  FWIW the reason I originally set the default to
16 was to prevent most users from ever needing to think about adjusting
autovacuum_worker_slots (which requires a restart and is a completely new
parameter that most will be unfamiliar with).

-- 
nathan

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Give up on running with NetBSD/OpenBSD's default semaphore settings.

  2. initdb: Do not report default autovacuum_worker_slots.

  3. Lower default value of autovacuum_worker_slots in initdb as needed.

  4. Allow changing autovacuum_max_workers without restarting.

  5. Reserve a PGPROC slot and semaphore for the slotsync worker process.

  6. Make archiver process an auxiliary process.

  7. Correct the formulas for System V IPC parameters SEMMNI and SEMMNS in docs.