Hi,

On 2023-01-27 14:24:51 +0900, Masahiko Sawada wrote:
> If I'm understanding this result correctly, it seems to me that your
> patch works well with the WAL DIO patch (WALDIO vs. WAL DIO & WAL
> BUFFERS READ), but there seems no visible performance gain with only
> your patch (HEAD vs. WAL BUFFERS READ). So it seems to me that your
> patch should be included in the WAL DIO patch rather than applying it
> alone. Am I missing something?

We already support using DIO for WAL - it's just restricted in a way that
makes it practically not usable. And the reason for that is precisely that
walsenders need to read the WAL. See get_sync_bit():

        /*
         * Optimize writes by bypassing kernel cache with O_DIRECT when using
         * O_SYNC and O_DSYNC.  But only if archiving and streaming are 
disabled,
         * otherwise the archive command or walsender process will read the WAL
         * soon after writing it, which is guaranteed to cause a physical read 
if
         * we bypassed the kernel cache. We also skip the
         * posix_fadvise(POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED) call in XLogFileClose() for the 
same
         * reason.
         *
         * Never use O_DIRECT in walreceiver process for similar reasons; the 
WAL
         * written by walreceiver is normally read by the startup process soon
         * after it's written. Also, walreceiver performs unaligned writes, 
which
         * don't work with O_DIRECT, so it is required for correctness too.
         */
        if (!XLogIsNeeded() && !AmWalReceiverProcess())
                o_direct_flag = PG_O_DIRECT;


Even if that weren't the case, splitting up bigger commits in incrementally
committable chunks is a good idea.

Greetings,

Andres Freund


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