On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 2:45 AM, Mark Kirkwood <mark.kirkw...@catalyst.net.nz > wrote:
> On 01/06/15 05:29, Joel Jacobson wrote: > >> While anyone who is familiar with postgres would never do something as >> stupid as to delete pg_xlog, >> according to Google, there appears to be a fair amount of end-users out >> there having made the irrevocable mistake of deleting the precious >> directory, >> a decision made on the assumption that since "it has *log* in the name >> so it must be unimportant" >> ( >> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12897429/what-does-pg-resetxlog-do-and-how-does-it-work >> ). >> >> If we could turn back time, would we have picked "pg_xlog" as the most >> optimal name for this important directory, or would we have come up with >> a more user-friendly name? >> >> Personally, I have never had any problems with pg_xlog, but I realize >> there are quite a few unlucky new users who end up in trouble. >> >> My suggestion is to use "pg_xjournal" instead of "pg_xlog" when new >> users create a new data directory using initdb, and allow for both >> directories to exist (exclusive or, i.e. either one or the other, but >> not both). That way we don't complicate the life for any existing users, >> all their tools will continue to work who rely on pg_xlog to be named >> pg_xlog, but only force new users to do a bit of googling when they >> can't use whatever tool that can't find pg_xlog. When they find out it's >> an important directory, they can simply create a symlink and their old >> not yet updated tool will work again. >> >> Thoughts? >> >> > +1 > > Strongly agree - I have had people on my dba course ask about deleting > these pesky 'log' directories (obvious confusion/conflation with pg_log > ...)! A change of name would help reduce the temptation! > > Why is it named pg_log by default anyway? While base and global are not named pg_base (or pg_default) and pg_global ? If we are going to break things in some release, maybe we should rename them all to have a little more rhyme or reason to them. Or is there already a rhyme or reason I am overlooking? I would think all the config and human-readable log files/directories should have one prefix (or absence of prefix), and all the internal files/directories with no user serviceable parts should have a different one. Cheers, Jeff
