On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 6:06 PM Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 8:48 AM Asif Rehman <asifr.reh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Sure. Though the backup manifest patch calculates and includes the > checksum of backup files and is done > > while the file is being transferred to the frontend-end. The manifest > file itself is copied at the > > very end of the backup. In parallel backup, I need the list of filenames > before file contents are transferred, in > > order to divide them into multiple workers. For that, the manifest file > has to be available when START_BACKUP > > is called. > > > > That means, backup manifest should support its creation while excluding > the checksum during START_BACKUP(). > > I also need the directory information as well for two reasons: > > > > - In plain format, base path has to exist before we can write the file. > we can extract the base path from the file > > but doing that for all files does not seem a good idea. > > - base backup does not include the content of some directories but those > directories although empty, are still > > expected in PGDATA. > > > > I can make these changes part of parallel backup (which would be on top > of backup manifest patch) or > > these changes can be done as part of manifest patch and then parallel > can use them. > > > > Robert what do you suggest? > > I think we should probably not use backup manifests here, actually. I > initially thought that would be a good idea, but after further thought > it seems like it just complicates the code to no real benefit. I > suggest that the START_BACKUP command just return a result set, like a > query, with perhaps four columns: file name, file type ('d' for > directory or 'f' for file), file size, file mtime. pg_basebackup will > ignore the mtime, but some other tools might find that useful > information. > > I wonder if we should also split START_BACKUP (which should enter > non-exclusive backup mode) from GET_FILE_LIST, in case some other > client program wants to use one of those but not the other. I think > that's probably a good idea, but not sure. > > I still think that the files should be requested one at a time, not a > huge long list in a single command. > What about have an API to get the single file or list of files? We will use a single file in our application and other tools can get the benefit of list of files. > > -- > Robert Haas > EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com > The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company > > > -- Ibrar Ahmed