On Mon, Sep 14, 2026 at 9:47 AM Daniel Gustafsson <[email protected]> wrote: > Thinking about this over the weekend I think there is really only one possible > option. When enabling checksums online the data checksums launcher will have > to scan the datadir for orphan files, and abort processing if any are found > (and log which files it found). While we don't have a tool for clearning, I > don't think online checksums can, or should, handle the orphan files in any > way > other than bailing out. This needs adding net new code, which this really > isn't a great time to be doing. CC:ing Heikki from RMT since I know he has > eyes on this already.
It's for the RMT to decide whether that's good enough, but I'm skeptical. I think a big part of the problem here is that it's really hard to make something race-free. But even if we solve that problem or disclaim it, I feel like it doesn't leave users in a very good place. A lot of users will experience failures and will have no easy way to find their way out from under the problem. Against that, there's a plausible argument that users want this feature enough that they'll still be happier to have the feature despite that problem. My counter-argument to that is that if we shipped features with usability restrictions that severe in every release, I don't think we'd be where we are today as a project. Limitations are fine, but limitations where there's not much you can do to avoid the problem or recover from it are pretty bad, IMHO. -- Robert Haas
