Re: [PATCH] Make pg_basebackup configure and start standby [Review]

Thanks for updating the patch!

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Boszormenyi Zoltan <zb(at)cybertec(dot)at> wrote:
> Backing up a standby server without -R preserves the original recovery.conf
> of the
> standby, it points to the standby's source server.
>
> Backing up a standby server with -R overwrites the original recovery.conf
> with the new
> one pointing to the standby instead of the standby's source server. Without
> -Ft, it is
> obvious. With -Ft, there are two recovery.conf files in the tar file and
> upon extracting it,
> the last written one (the one generated via -R) overwrites the original.

The tar file is always extracted such way in all platform which PostgreSQL
supports? I'm just concerned about that some tool in some platform might
prefer the original recovery.conf when extracting tar file. If the spec of tar
format specifies such behavior (i.e., the last written file of the same name
is always preferred), it's OK.

I found the bug that recovery.conf is included in the tar file of the tablespace
instead of base.tar, when there are tablespaces in the server.

Maybe this is nitpicky problem,,,, but...
If port number is not explicitly specified in pg_basebackup, the port
number is not
included to primary_conninfo in recovery.conf which is created during
the backup.
That is, the standby server using such recovery.conf tries to connect
to the default
port number because the port number is not supplied in primary_conninfo. This
assumes that the default port number is the same between the master and standby.
But this is not true. The default port number can be changed in --with-pgport
configure option, so the default port number might be different
between the master
and standby. To avoid this uncertainty, pg_basebackup -R should always include
the port number in primary_conninfo?

When the password is required to connect to the server, pg_basebackup -R
always writes the password setting into primary_conninfo in recovery.conf.
But if the password is supplied from .pgpass, ISTM that the password setting
doesn't need to be written into primary_conninfo. Right?

+ The password written into recovery.conf is not escaped even if special
+ characters appear in it. The administrator must review recovery.conf
+ to ensure proper escaping.

Is it difficult to make pg_basebackup escape the special characters in the
password? It's better if we can remove this restriction.

I've not reviewed PQconninfo patch yet. Will review.

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao