On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 2:32 AM Maciek Sakrejda <m.sakre...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Considering the vanishingly small number of actual complaints we've > > seen about this, that sounds ridiculously over-engineered. > > A documentation example should be sufficient. > > I don't know if this will tip the scales, but I'd like to lodge a > belated complaint. I've gotten myself in this server-fails-to-start > situation several times (in development, for what it's worth). The > syntax (as Bharath pointed out in the original message) is pretty > picky, there are no guard rails, and if you got there through ALTER > SYSTEM, you can't fix it with ALTER SYSTEM (because the server isn't > up). If you go to fix it manually, you get a scary "Do not edit this > file manually!" warning that you have to know to ignore in this case > (that's if you find the file after you realize what the fairly generic > "FATAL: ... No such file or directory" error in the log is telling > you). Plus you have to get the (different!) quoting syntax right or > cut your losses and delete the change.
+1. I disagree that trying to detect this kind of problem would be "ridiculously over-engineered." I don't know whether it can be done elegantly enough that we'd be happy with it and I don't know whether it would end up just garden variety over-engineered. But there's nothing ridiculous about trying to prevent people from putting their system into a state where it won't start. (To be clear, I also think updating the documentation is sensible, without taking a view on exactly what that update should look like.) -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com