For performance reasons a larger segment size than the default 16MB
can be useful. A larger segment size has two main benefits: Firstly,
in setups using archiving, it makes it easier to write scripts that
can keep up with higher amounts of WAL, secondly, the WAL has to be
written and synced to disk less frequently.
But at the same time large segment size are disadvantageous for
smaller databases. So far the segment size had to be configured at
compile time, often making it unrealistic to choose one fitting to a
particularly load. Therefore change it to a initdb time setting.
This includes a breaking changes to the xlogreader.h API, which now
requires the current segment size to be configured. For that and
similar reasons a number of binaries had to be taught how to recognize
the current segment size.
Author: Beena Emerson, editorialized by Andres Freund
Reviewed-By: Andres Freund, David Steele, Kuntal Ghosh, Michael
Paquier, Peter Eisentraut, Robert Hass, Tushar Ahuja
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAOG9ApEAcQ--1ieKbhFzXSQPw_YLmepaa4hNdnY5+ZULpt81Mw@mail.gmail.com
The POSIX standard does not say that the success return value for
fcntl(F_SETFD) and fcntl(F_SETFL) is zero; it says only that it's not -1.
We had several calls that were making the stronger assumption. Adjust
them to test specifically for -1 for strict spec compliance.
The standard further leaves open the possibility that the O_NONBLOCK
flag bit is not the only active one in F_SETFL's argument. Formally,
therefore, one ought to get the current flags with F_GETFL and store
them back with only the O_NONBLOCK bit changed when trying to change
the nonblock state. In port/noblock.c, we were doing the full pushup
in pg_set_block but not in pg_set_noblock, which is just weird. Make
both of them do it properly, since they have little business making
any assumptions about the socket they're handed. The other places
where we're issuing F_SETFL are working with FDs we just got from
pipe(2), so it's reasonable to assume the FDs' properties are all
default, so I didn't bother adding F_GETFL steps there.
Also, while pg_set_block deserves some points for trying to do things
right, somebody had decided that it'd be even better to cast fcntl's
third argument to "long". Which is completely loony, because POSIX
clearly says the third argument for an F_SETFL call is "int".
Given the lack of field complaints, these missteps apparently are not
of significance on any common platforms. But they're still wrong,
so back-patch to all supported branches.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/30882.1492800880@sss.pgh.pa.us
Peter Eisentraut
Andres Freund
Alvaro Herrera
Tom Lane