Re: ALTER SYSTEM SET command to change postgresql.conf parameters (RE: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review])

* Andres Freund (andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com) wrote:
> On 2013-08-29 21:26:48 -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > It's not the OPs guy that I'm worried about using ALTER SYSTEM- I don't
> > expect them to have any clue about it or care about it, except where it
> > can be used to modify things under /etc which they, rightfully, consider
> > their domain.
>
> I think for the scenarios you describe it makes far, far much more sense
> to add the ability to easily monitor for two things:
> * on-disk configuration isn't the same as the currently loaded (not
> trivially possible yet)

That would certainly help. I don't know that it needs to be technically
'trivial', but at least having check_postgres.pl or something which can
alert on it would be an improvement. Clearly, that would be valuable
today (assuming it doesn't already exist somewhere.. it might).

> * Configuration variables only come from locations that are approved for
> in your scenario (Already possible, we might want to make it even easier)

That an interesting notion; do you have something specific in mind..?
The easiest, imv anyway, would be that options set in postgresql.conf
can't be overridden, but that gets us into the bootstrap problem that
people seem to be concerned about. It would also be a change to how
postgresql.conf is parsed today which some people would be annoyed by.
Having some configuration option which says what can be modified by
alter system doesn't strike me as a terribly good solution either.

Thanks,

Stephen