Re: [RFC] Shouldn't we remove annoying FATAL messages from server log?

On 12/11/2013 08:48 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> The fundamental problem IMO is that you want to complicate the definition
> of what these things mean as a substitute for DBAs learning something
> about Postgres. That seems like a fool's errand from here. They're going
> to have to learn what FATAL means sooner or later, and making it more
> complicated just raises the height of that barrier.

I don't think it works to change the NOTICE/ERROR/FATAL tags; for one
thing, I can hear the screaming about people's log scripts from here.

However, it would really be useful to have an extra tag (in addition to
the ERROR or FATAL) for "If you're seeing this message, something has
gone seriously wrong on the server." Just stuff like corruption
messages, backend crashes, etc.

Otherwise we're requiring users to come up with an alphabet soup of
regexes to filter out the noise error messages from the really, really
important ones. Speaking as someone who does trainings for new DBAs,
the part where I do "what to look for in the logs" requires over an hour
and still doesn't cover everything. And doesn't internationalize. That's
nasty.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com