spotted by Qingqing Zhou. The HASH_ENTER action now automatically
fails with elog(ERROR) on out-of-memory --- which incidentally lets
us eliminate duplicate error checks in quite a bunch of places. If
you really need the old return-NULL-on-out-of-memory behavior, you
can ask for HASH_ENTER_NULL. But there is now an Assert in that path
checking that you aren't hoping to get that behavior in a palloc-based
hash table.
Along the way, remove the old HASH_FIND_SAVE/HASH_REMOVE_SAVED actions,
which were not being used anywhere anymore, and were surely too ugly
and unsafe to want to see revived again.
hash table. This is a pretty unlikely scenario, since the table
should be tiny, but we can't guarantee continued correct operation
if it does occur. Spotted by Qingqing Zhou.
collector messages, per recent discussion on pgsql-patches. This
actually required quite a few changes -- for example,
"databaseid != InvalidOid" was used to check whether a slot in the
backend entry table was initialized, but that no longer works since
the slot might be initialized prior to receiving the BESTART message
which contains the database id. We now use procpid > 0 to indicate
that a slot is non-empty.
Other changes:
- various comment improvements and cleanups
- there's no need to zero-out the entire activity buffer in
pgstat_add_backend(), we can just set activity[0] to '\0'.
- remove the counting of the # of connections to a database; this
was not used anywhere
One change in behavior I wasn't sure about: previously, the code
would create a hash table entry for a database as soon as any message
was received whose header referenced that database. Now, we only
create hash table entries as needed (so for example BESTART won't
create a database hash table entry, since it doesn't need to
access anything in the per-db hash table). It would be easy enough
to retain the old behavior, but AFAICS it is not required.
* Add session start time to pg_stat_activity
* Add the client IP address and port to pg_stat_activity
Original patch from Magnus Hagander, code review by Neil Conway. Catalog
version bumped. This patch sends the client IP address and port number in
every statistics message; that's not ideal, but will be fixed up shortly.
* Changes the APIs to the timezone functions to take a pg_tz pointer as
an argument, representing the timezone to use for the selected
operation.
* Adds a global_timezone variable that represents the current timezone
in the backend as set by SET TIMEZONE (or guc, or env, etc).
* Implements a hash-table cache of loaded tables, so we don't have to
read and parse the TZ file everytime we change a timezone. While not
necesasry now (we don't change timezones very often), I beleive this
will be necessary (or at least good) when "multiple timezones in the
same query" is eventually implemented. And code-wise, this was the time
to do it.
There are no user-visible changes at this time. Implementing the
"multiple zones in one query" is a later step...
This also gets rid of some of the cruft needed to "back out a timezone
change", since we previously couldn't check a timezone unless it was
activated first.
Passes regression tests on win32, linux (slackware 10) and solaris x86.
Magnus Hagander
whose keys are OIDs. The only one that looks particularly performance
critical is the relcache hashtable, but as long as we've got the function
we may as well use it wherever it's applicable.
indexes. Replace all heap_openr and index_openr calls by heap_open
and index_open. Remove runtime lookups of catalog OID numbers in
various places. Remove relcache's support for looking up system
catalogs by name. Bulky but mostly very boring patch ...
exit. Without this, operations triggered during backend exit (such as
temp table deletions) won't be counted ... which given heavy usage of
temp tables can lead to pg_autovacuum falling way behind on the need
to vacuum pg_class and pg_attribute. Per reports from Steve Crawford
and others.
* Touch the socket and lock file at least every hour, to
* ensure that they are not removed by overzealous /tmp-cleaning
* tasks. Set to 58 minutes so a cleaner never sees the
* file as an hour old.
is still alive. This improves our odds of not getting fooled by an
unrelated process when checking a stale lock file. Other checks already
in place, plus one newly added in checkDataDir(), ensure that we cannot
attempt to usurp the place of a postmaster belonging to a different userid,
so there is no need to error out. Add comments indicating the importance
of these other checks.
elog if the former has trouble writing its file. Code review for
Magnus' patch to redirect stderr to syslog on Windows (Bruce's version
seems right, but did some minor prettification).
Backpatch both changes to 8.0 branch.
before we can invoke fork() -- flush stdio buffers, save and restore the
profiling timer on Linux with LINUX_PROFILE, and handle BeOS stuff. This
patch moves that code into a single function, fork_process(), instead of
duplicating it at the various callsites of fork().
This patch doesn't address the EXEC_BACKEND case; there is room for
further cleanup there.
the freelist, plus per-buffer spinlocks that protect access to individual
shared buffer headers. This requires abandoning a global freelist (since
the freelist is a global contention point), which shoots down ARC and 2Q
as well as plain LRU management. Adopt a clock sweep algorithm instead.
Preliminary results show substantial improvement in multi-backend situations.
in GetNewTransactionId(). Since the limit value has to be computed
before we run any real transactions, this requires adding code to database
startup to scan pg_database and determine the oldest datfrozenxid.
This can conveniently be combined with the first stage of an attack on
the problem that the 'flat file' copies of pg_shadow and pg_group are
not properly updated during WAL recovery. The code I've added to
startup resides in a new file src/backend/utils/init/flatfiles.c, and
it is responsible for rewriting the flat files as well as initializing
the XID wraparound limit value. This will eventually allow us to get
rid of GetRawDatabaseInfo too, but we'll need an initdb so we can add
a trigger to pg_database.
is the minimum required fix. I want to look next at taking advantage of
it by simplifying the message semantics in the shared inval message queue,
but that part can be held over for 8.1 if it turns out too ugly.
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
to shared memory as soon as possible, ie, right after read_backend_variables.
The effective difference from the original code is that this happens
before instead of after read_nondefault_variables(), which loads GUC
information and is apparently capable of expanding the backend's memory
allocation more than you'd think it should. This should fix the
failure-to-attach-to-shared-memory reports we've been seeing on Windows.
Also clean up a few bits of unnecessarily grotty EXEC_BACKEND code.
> seconds to 10 seconds. The original number was plucked from thin air
> some months ago, and I'd like to review that now based upon further
> thought, observation and experience.
>
> This change has little or no effect on performance, since the interval
> is there mainly to avoid repeated respawn attempts if archiver fails at
> startup. Archiver start-up time is very quick, so there is little danger
> of exceeding 10 seconds.
>
> On a busy system, if the archiver does die, then many files can build up
> in the 60 seconds before respawning. That xlog file backlog could take
> some time to clear. This then leaves a larger than normal window of data
> loss for a possibly long period.
>
> It's a minor change only, with no other effect on function.
Simon Riggs
even uglier than it was already :-(. Also, on Windows only, use temporary
shared memory segments instead of ordinary files to pass over critical
variable values from postmaster to child processes. Magnus Hagander
plain SUSET instead. Also delay processing of options received in
client connection request until after we know if the user is a superuser,
so that SUSET values can be set that way by legitimate superusers.
Per recent discussion.
files and directories. This ensures that the bgwriter will close any open
file references it is holding for files therein, which is needed for the
rmdir() to succeed. Andrew Dunstan and Tom Lane.
returning a NULL pointer (some callers remembered to check the return
value, but some did not -- it is safer to just bail out).
Also, cleanup pgstat.c to use elog(ERROR) rather than elog(LOG) followed
by exit().
C:\msys\1.0\home\y-asaba>pg_ctl -D data restart
waiting for postmaster to shut down...LOG: received smart shutdown
request.
LOG: shutting down
LOG: database system is shut down
done
postmaster stopped
postmaster starting
C:\msys\1.0\home\y-asaba>postmaster.exe: invalid argument: "'-D'"
Try "postmaster.exe --help" for more information.
Yoshiyuki Asaba
The vars are renamed to data_directory, config_file, hba_file, and
ident_file, and are guaranteed to be set to accurate absolute paths
during postmaster startup.
This commit does not yet do anything about hiding path values from
non-superusers.
Refactor code into something reasonably understandable, cause
use of the feature to not fail in standalone backends or in
EXEC_BACKEND case, fix sloppy guc.c table entries, make the
documentation minimally usable.
* We are not sure how much precision is in tv_usec, so we
* swap the high and low 16 bits of 'later' and XOR them with
* 'earlier'. On the off chance that the result is 0, we
* loop until it isn't.
Greg Stark
different backends get a reasonably wide set of initial seeds even if
gettimeofday returns tv_usec values with only a few bits of precision.
Per recent discussion.
* Links with -leay32 and -lssleay32 instead of crypto and ssl. On win32,
"crypto and ssl" is only used for static linking.
* Initializes SSL in the backend and not just in the postmaster. We
cannot pass the SSL context from the postmaster through the parameter
file, because it contains function pointers.
* Split one error check in be-secure.c. Previously we could not tell
which of three calls actually failed. The previous code also returned
incorrect error messages if SSL_accept() failed - that function needs to
use SSL_get_error() on the return value, can't just use the error queue.
* Since the win32 implementation uses non-blocking sockets "behind the
scenes" in order to deliver signals correctly, implements a version of
SSL_accept() that can handle this. Also, add a wait function in case
SSL_read or SSL_write() needs more data.
Magnus Hagander
to allow DBA to choose the form in which log filenames reflect the
current time. Also allow for truncating instead of appending to
pre-existing files --- this is convenient when the log filename pattern
rewrites the same names cyclically. Per Ed L.
Win32 WaitForMultipleObjects:
ret = WaitForMultipleObjects(win32_numChildren, win32_childHNDArray,
FALSE, 0);
Problem is 'win32_numChildren' could be more then 64 ( function supports
), problem basically arise ( kills postgres ) when you create more then
64 connections and terminate some of them sill leaving more then 64.
Claudio Natoli
>>GetLastError will
>>> give much more details than errno.
>>
>>How much more, really? That mapping table gave me the impression that
>>the win32 error codes aren't all that much more detailed than errno...
>
>The mapping table is not complete. My winerror.h from the SDK
>lists 2209
>error codes, whereas errno.h lists 42...
>
>I still don't think we'll get that much more stuff. Right now,
>the Win32
>code paths that actually use the more advanced functions already write
>out the error number in case something happens. We can keep doing that
>for the other paths (ereport the error *number* when the mapping does
>not have a match). The map to errno will catch almost all cases, I
>think. And in the corner cases we can do with just the number, and use
>"net helpmsg" to get the actual message when checking...
Here's an attempt on this. new file goes in backend/port/win32.
Magnus Hagander
slashes to backslashes #ifdef WIN32. This is to cope with the fact
that Windows seems exceedingly unfriendly to slashes in shell commands,
as per recent discussion.
recommend that people go get Apache's rotatelogs program. Additional
benefits are that configuration is done through GUC, rather than
externally, and that the postmaster can monitor the log rotator and
restart it after failure (though we certainly hope that won't happen
often).
Andreas Pflug, some rework by Tom Lane.
and history files as per recent discussion. While at it, remove
pg_terminate_backend, since we have decided we do not have time during
this release cycle to address the reliability concerns it creates.
Split the 'Miscellaneous Functions' documentation section into
'System Information Functions' and 'System Administration Functions',
which hopefully will draw the eyes of those looking for such things.
possible to trap an error inside a function rather than letting it
propagate out to PostgresMain. You still have to use AbortCurrentTransaction
to clean up, but at least the error handling itself will cooperate.
live backends, the archiver and stats processes never got sent a
kill signal. They'd eventually exit on their own, but not for awhile,
which is a bit annoying when you are trying to replace the executable
file on a platform that doesn't allow removal of busy executables.
Also, tweak main loop logic so that we will perform the background
tasks after select() returns EINTR.
recovery more manageable. Also, undo recent change to add FILE_HEADER
and WASTED_SPACE records to XLOG; instead make the XLOG page header
variable-size with extra fields in the first page of an XLOG file.
This should fix the boundary-case bugs observed by Mark Kirkwood.
initdb forced due to change of XLOG representation.
performance front, but with feature freeze upon us I think it's time to
drive a stake in the ground and say that this will be in 7.5.
Alvaro Herrera, with some help from Tom Lane.
specified in just one place and adhered to exactly, rather than just more
or less. A side effect is to increase PGSTAT_ACTIVITY_SIZE (maximum
reported query length) from 256 to nearly 1000.
begin the shutdown checkpoint; there isn't anything left for them to do,
so we may as well ensure that they shut down sooner rather than later.
Per discussion.
>> though - the GUC variable was not set in the child
>processes. So "show
>> lc_collate" would *always* return "C", for example. attached
>patch fixes
>> this.
>
>Hm. Why were these vars not propagated by the regular
>mechanism for GUC
>variables (write_nondefault_variables or whatever it's called)? If the
>problem is that it's not accepting PGC_INTERNAL values, then we need to
>fix it there not here, because otherwise we'll have to pass all the
>PGC_INTERNAL variables through the backend_variables file, which seems
>like a recipe for more of the same sort of bug.
Good point :-(
I think the problem is not only that it specifically does not deal with
PGC_INTERNAL variables. The problem is in the fact that
write_nondefault_variables is called *before* the locale is read
(because the locale is read from pg_control and not from any of the
"usual" ways to read it).
Attached patch is another stab at fixing it. It makes postmaster dump a
new copy of the file once it has started the database (before it accepts
any connections), which is when it will know about these parameters.
Also updates the reading code to set the context to the one where the
variable was originally set (PGC_POSTMASTER won't work for PGC_INTERNAL,
and the other way around).
We still pass lc_collate through the special file, because
set_config_option on lc_collate will speficially *not* call setlocale(),
and we need that call. But we no longer call set_config_option from
there.
Magnus Hagander
place of time_t, as per prior discussion. The behavior does not change
on machines without a 64-bit-int type, but on machines with one, which
is most, we are rid of the bizarre boundary behavior at the edges of
the 32-bit-time_t range (1901 and 2038). The system will now treat
times over the full supported timestamp range as being in your local
time zone. It may seem a little bizarre to consider that times in
4000 BC are PST or EST, but this is surely at least as reasonable as
propagating Gregorian calendar rules back that far.
I did not modify the format of the zic timezone database files, which
means that for the moment the system will not know about daylight-savings
periods outside the range 1901-2038. Given the way the files are set up,
it's not a simple decision like 'widen to 64 bits'; we have to actually
think about the range of years that need to be supported. We should
probably inquire what the plans of the upstream zic people are before
making any decisions of our own.
explicitly fsync'ing every (non-temp) file we have written since the
last checkpoint. In the vast majority of cases, the burden of the
fsyncs should fall on the bgwriter process not on backends. (To this
end, we assume that an fsync issued by the bgwriter will force out
blocks written to the same file by other processes using other file
descriptors. Anyone have a problem with that?) This makes the world
safe for WIN32, which ain't even got sync(2), and really makes the world
safe for Unixen as well, because sync(2) never had the semantics we need:
it offers no way to wait for the requested I/O to finish.
Along the way, fix a bug I recently introduced in xlog recovery:
file truncation replay failed to clear bufmgr buffers for the dropped
blocks, which could result in 'PANIC: heap_delete_redo: no block'
later on in xlog replay.
than being random pieces of other files. Give bgwriter responsibility
for all checkpoint activity (other than a post-recovery checkpoint);
so this child process absorbs the functionality of the former transient
checkpoint and shutdown subprocesses. While at it, create an actual
include file for postmaster.c, which for some reason never had its own
file before.
about a third, make it work on non-Windows platforms again. (But perhaps
I broke the WIN32 code, since I have no way to test that.) Fold all the
paths that fork postmaster child processes to go through the single
routine SubPostmasterMain, which takes care of resurrecting the state that
would normally be inherited from the postmaster (including GUC variables).
Clean up some places where there's no particularly good reason for the
EXEC and non-EXEC cases to work differently. Take care of one or two
FIXMEs that remained in the code.
of ThisStartUpID and RedoRecPtr into new backends. It's a lot easier just
to make them all grab the values out of shared memory during startup.
This helps to decouple the postmaster from checkpoint execution, which I
need since I'm intending to let the bgwriter do it instead, and it also
fixes a bug in the Win32 port: ThisStartUpID wasn't getting propagated at
all AFAICS. (Doesn't give me a lot of faith in the amount of testing that
port has gotten.)
the four functions.
> Also, please justify the temp-related changes. I was not aware that we
> had any breakage there.
patch-tmp-schema.txt contains the following bits:
*) Changes pg_namespace_aclmask() so that the superuser is always able
to create objects in the temp namespace.
*) Changes pg_namespace_aclmask() so that if this is a temp namespace,
objects are only allowed to be created in the temp namespace if the
user has TEMP privs on the database. This encompasses all object
creation, not just TEMP tables.
*) InitTempTableNamespace() checks to see if the current user, not the
session user, has access to create a temp namespace.
The first two changes are necessary to support the third change. Now
it's possible to revoke all temp table privs from non-super users and
limiting all creation of temp tables/schemas via a function that's
executed with elevated privs (security definer). Before this change,
it was not possible to have a setuid function to create a temp
table/schema if the session user had no TEMP privs.
patch-area-path.txt contains:
*) Can now determine the area of a closed path.
patch-dfmgr.txt contains:
*) Small tweak to add the library path that's being expanded.
I was using $lib/foo.so and couldn't easily figure out what the error
message, "invalid macro name in dynamic library path" meant without
looking through the source code. With the path in there, at least I
know where to start looking in my config file.
Sean Chittenden
(SIGUSR1, which we have not been using recently) instead of piggybacking
on SIGUSR2-driven NOTIFY processing. This has several good results:
the processing needed to drain the sinval queue is a lot less than the
processing needed to answer a NOTIFY; there's less contention since we
don't have a bunch of backends all trying to acquire exclusive lock on
pg_listener; backends that are sitting inside a transaction block can
still drain the queue, whereas NOTIFY processing can't run if there's
an open transaction block. (This last is a fairly serious issue that
I don't think we ever recognized before --- with clients like JDBC that
tend to sit with open transaction blocks, the sinval queue draining
mechanism never really worked as intended, probably resulting in a lot
of useless cache-reset overhead.) This is the last of several proposed
changes in response to Philip Warner's recent report of sinval-induced
performance problems.
and should do now that we control our own destiny for timezone handling,
but this commit gets the bulk of the picayune diffs in place.
Magnus Hagander and Tom Lane.
timezone code and other places.
Remove elog() calls from find_my_exec; do fprintf(stderr) instead. We
can then remove the exec.c handling in the makefile because it doesn't
have to be built to suppress elog calls.
find_my_exec/find_other_exec(). Remove passing of progname to these
functions as they can find that out from argv[0], which they already
have.
Make get_progname return const char *, and update all progname variables
to be const char *.
all the code that looks for other binaries. I move FindExec into
port/exec.c (and renamed it to find_my_binary()). I also added
find_other_binary that looks for another binary in the same directory as
the calling program, and checks the version string.
The only behavior change was that initdb and pg_dump would look in the
hard-coded bindir directory if it can't find the requested binary in the
same directory as the caller. The new code throws an error. The old
behavior seemed too error prone for version mismatches.
* removed a few redundant defines
* get_user_name safe under win32
* rationalized pipe read EOF for win32 (UPDATED PATCH USED)
* changed all backend instances of sleep() to pg_usleep
- except for the SLEEP_ON_ASSERT in assert.c, as it would exceed a
32-bit long [Note to patcher: If a SLEEP_ON_ASSERT of 2000 seconds is
acceptable, please replace with pg_usleep(2000000000L)]
I added a comment to that part of the code:
/*
* It would be nice to use pg_usleep() here, but only does 2000 sec
* or 33 minutes, which seems too short.
*/
sleep(1000000);
Claudio Natoli
It works on the principle of turning sockets into non-blocking, and then
emulate blocking behaviour on top of that, while allowing signals to
run. Signals are now implemented using an event instead of APCs, thus
getting rid of the issue of APCs not being compatible with "old style"
sockets functions.
It also moves the win32 specific code away from pqsignal.h/c into
port/win32, and also removes the "thread style workaround" of the APC
issue previously in place.
In order to make things work, a few things are also changed in pgstat.c:
1) There is now a separate pipe to the collector and the bufferer. This
is required because the pipe will otherwise only be signalled in one of
the processes when the postmaster goes down. The MS winsock code for
select() must have some kind of workaround for this behaviour, but I
have found no stable way of doing that. You really are not supposed to
use the same socket from more than one process (unless you use
WSADuplicateSocket(), in which case the docs specifically say that only
one will be flagged).
2) The check for "postmaster death" is moved into a separate select()
call after the main loop. The previous behaviour select():ed on the
postmaster pipe, while later explicitly saying "we do NOT check for
postmaster exit inside the loop".
The issue was that the code relies on the same select() call seeing both
the postmaster pipe *and* the pgstat pipe go away. This does not always
happen, and it appears that useing WSAEventSelect() makes it even more
common that it does not.
Since it's only called when the process exits, I don't think using a
separate select() call will have any significant impact on how the stats
collector works.
Magnus Hagander
listen_addresses parameter, as per recent discussion. The default behavior
is now to listen on localhost, which eliminates the need for the -i
postmaster switch in many scenarios.
Andrew Dunstan
initialization of stats process under EXEC_BACKEND.
[A cleaner, rationalized approach to stat/backend/SSDataBase child
processes under EXEC_BACKEND is on my TODO list. However this patch
takes care of immediate concerns (ie. stats test now passes under
win32)]
Claudio Natoli
#log_line_prefix = '' # e.g. '<%u%%%d> '
# %u=user name %d=database name
# %r=remote host and port
# %p=PID %t=timestamp %i=command tag
# %c=session id %l=session line number
# %s=session start timestamp
# %x=stop here in non-session processes
# %%='%'
Andrew Dunstan
* Mostly, casting etc to remove compilation warnings in win32 only code.
* main.c: set _IONBF to stdout/stderr under win32 (under win32, _IOLBF
defaults to full buffering)
* pg_resetxlog/Makefile: ensures dirmod.o gets cleaned (got bitten by
this when, after "make clean"ing, switching compilation between Ming +
Cygwin)
Claudio Natoli
* Changes incorrect CYGWIN defines to __CYGWIN__
* Some localtime returns NULL checks (when unchecked cause SEGVs under
Win32
regression tests)
* Rationalized CreateSharedMemoryAndSemaphores and
AttachSharedMemoryAndSemaphores (Bruce, I finally remembered to do it);
requires attention.
Claudio Natoli
number of openable files and the number already opened. This eliminates
depending on sysconf(_SC_OPEN_MAX), and allows much saner behavior on
platforms where open-file slots are used up by semaphores.
allow the bgwriter to start before the startup subprocess has finished
... it tends to crash otherwise. (The same problem may have existed for
the checkpointer, I'm not entirely sure.) Remove some code that was
redundant because the bgwriter is handled as a member of the backend list.
Natoli and Bruce Momjian (and some cosmetic fixes from Neil Conway).
Changes:
- remove duplicate signal definitions from pqsignal.h
- replace pqkill() with kill() and redefine kill() in Win32
- use ereport() in place of fprintf() in some error handling in
pqsignal.c
- export pg_queue_signal() and make use of it where necessary
- add a console control handler for Ctrl-C and similar handling
on Win32
- do WaitForSingleObjectEx() in CHECK_FOR_INTERRUPTS() on Win32;
query cancelling should now work on Win32
- various other fixes and cleanups
whereToSendOutput instead because they are really inquiring about
the correct client communication protocol. Update some comments.
This is pointing towards supporting regular FE/BE client protocol
in a standalone backend, per discussion a month or so back.
against the latest shapshot. It also includes the replacement of kill()
with pqkill() and sigsetmask() with pqsigsetmask().
Passes all tests fine on my linux machine once applied. Still doesn't
link completely on Win32 - there are a few things still required. But
much closer than before.
At Bruce's request, I'm goint to write up a README file about the method
of signals delivery chosen and why the others were rejected (basically a
summary of the mailinglist discussions). I'll finish that up once/if the
patch is accepted.
Magnus Hagander
PostmasterPid variable, which gets set (early) in PostmasterMain
getppid would not be the postmaster?
[fork/exec] Implements processCancelRequest by keeping an array of
pid/cancel_key structs in shared mem
[fork/exec] Moves AttachSharedMemoryAndSemaphores call for backends into
SubPostmasterMain
[win32] Implements reaper/waitpid by keeping an arrays of children
pids,handles in postmaster local mem
- this item is largely untested, for reasons which should be
obvious, but appears sound
[win32/all] Added extern for pgpipe in Win32 case, and changed the second
pipe call (which seems to have been missed earlier) to pgpipe
[win32] #define'd ftruncate to chsize in the Win32 case
[win32] PG_USLEEP for Win32 has a misplaced paren. Fixed.
[win32] DLLIMPORT handling for MingW case
Claudio Natoli
pointer type when it is not necessary to do so.
For future reference, casting NULL to a pointer type is only necessary
when (a) invoking a function AND either (b) the function has no prototype
OR (c) the function is a varargs function.
BackendFork/SSDataBase/pgstat) startup, to allow fork/exec calls to
closely mimic (the soon to be provided) Win32 CreateProcess equivalent
calls.
Claudio Natoli