Re: BUG #6011: Some extra messages are output in the event log at PostgreSQL startup

Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 16:08, MauMau <maumau307(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> The problem is that the following messages are always output in the event
>> log at PostgreSQL startup, even when the log_destination parameter doesn't
>> contain 'eventlog':
>>
>> [message 1]
>> Waiting for server startup...
>>
>> [message 2]
>> Server started and accepting connections
>>
>> One of my customers is very sensitive to extra unnecessary messages. They
>> gave me a simple and reasonable question "Why are those messages output when
>> event logging is disabled? Is this a bug? Is there a way to prevent these
>> messages?"

> Any events that happen before we have opened the regular logfile will
> be written to the eventlog if the server is running as a Windows
> service. There is no way to turn that off (other than removing the
> code and recompiling, of course). If we didn't send those to the
> eventlog, they would be completely lost since there is no stderr
> available to a windows service.

These particular messages appear to be coming from pg_ctl, not from the
server at all, so the server logging configuration is irrelevant anyway.

What I think *is* relevant is pg_ctl's -s (--silent) switch, which is
defined as "only print errors, no informational messages". I would
expect that to silence "waiting for ..." messages, and indeed it appears
to do so in all the cases on the Unix side of the fence. However,
someone chose to code these Windows-specific messages as direct
write_eventlog calls instead of going through print_msg, which means
that -s doesn't silence them. So possibly the OP is right that this is
a bug and not just an unimplemented feature.

regards, tom lane