On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 12:24:14PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote: > Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: > > On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 11:05 AM Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > >> Yeah, given current usage it would be better to call it the "recovery > >> process". However, I'm feeling dubious that it's worth the cost to > >> change. The "startup" name is embedded in a lot of places, I think, > >> and people are used to it. I fear changing it would create more > >> confusion than it removes. > > > As far as being used to it, I think hackers are, but regular users are > > very much not. > > Being hackers ourselves, I'm not sure we're qualified to opine on > that. I cannot say that I've noticed any questions about it on > the mailing lists, though.
A data point: I was recently confused when I observed the "startup" process running for a bit after restarting the instance (because connections were being rejected) I concluded that the shutdown was unclean, and started to blame the PGDG RPM's initscript [0]. Actually, the shutdown was clean, and the "startup" process was just slow doing $somethingelse (I imagine this will be less confusing in pg15 - 9ce346eabf). [0] I believe this is configured such that systemd could kill -9 the postmaster (but that's not what happened in this case). https://redmine.postgresql.org/issues/6855 If you rename "startup", I think "recovery" would be a bad choice, since it seems to imply that recovery/wal replay was necessary. > Personally I think making a glossary entry that explains what the > process does would be a better plan than renaming it. Since d3014fff4: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/glossary.html#GLOSSARY-STARTUP-PROCESS -- Justin