Hi, I've often had to analyze what caused corruption in PG instances, where the symptoms match not having had backup_label in place when bringing on the node. However that's surprisingly hard - the only log messages that indicate use of backup_label are at DEBUG1.
Given how crucial use of backup_label is and how frequently people do get it wrong, I think we should add a LOG message - it's not like use of backup_label is a frequent thing in the life of a postgres instance and is going to swamp the log. And I think we should backpatch that addition. Medium term I think we should go further, and leave evidence in pg_control about the last use of ControlFile->backupStartPoint, instead of resetting it. I realize that there's a discussion about removing backup_label - but I think that's fairly orthogonal. Should we go with the pg_control approach, we should still emit a useful message when starting in a state that's "equivalent" to having used the backup_label. Thoughts? Greetings, Andres Freund
