Allow a streaming replication standby to follow a timeline switch.

Before this patch, streaming replication would refuse to start replicating
if the timeline in the primary doesn't exactly match the standby. The
situation where it doesn't match is when you have a master, and two
standbys, and you promote one of the standbys to become new master.
Promoting bumps up the timeline ID, and after that bump, the other standby
would refuse to continue.

There's significantly more timeline related logic in streaming replication
now. First of all, when a standby connects to primary, it will ask the
primary for any timeline history files that are missing from the standby.
The missing files are sent using a new replication command TIMELINE_HISTORY,
and stored in standby's pg_xlog directory. Using the timeline history files,
the standby can follow the latest timeline present in the primary
(recovery_target_timeline='latest'), just as it can follow new timelines
appearing in an archive directory.

START_REPLICATION now takes a TIMELINE parameter, to specify exactly which
timeline to stream WAL from. This allows the standby to request the primary
to send over WAL that precedes the promotion. The replication protocol is
changed slightly (in a backwards-compatible way although there's little hope
of streaming replication working across major versions anyway), to allow
replication to stop when the end of timeline reached, putting the walsender
back into accepting a replication command.

Many thanks to Amit Kapila for testing and reviewing various versions of
this patch.

1 files changed, 83 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/transam/timeline.c b/src/backend/access/transam/timeline.c
index 0681944ae5e..b33d230c701 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/transam/timeline.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/transam/timeline.c
@@ -411,6 +411,89 @@ writeTimeLineHistory(TimeLineID newTLI, TimeLineID parentTLI,
 }
 
 /*
+ * Writes a history file for given timeline and contents.
+ *
+ * Currently this is only used in the walreceiver process, and so there are
+ * no locking considerations.  But we should be just as tense as XLogFileInit
+ * to avoid emplacing a bogus file.
+ */
+void
+writeTimeLineHistoryFile(TimeLineID tli, char *content, int size)
+{
+	char		path[MAXPGPATH];
+	char		tmppath[MAXPGPATH];
+	int			fd;
+
+	/*
+	 * Write into a temp file name.
+	 */
+	snprintf(tmppath, MAXPGPATH, XLOGDIR "/xlogtemp.%d", (int) getpid());
+
+	unlink(tmppath);
+
+	/* do not use get_sync_bit() here --- want to fsync only at end of fill */
+	fd = OpenTransientFile(tmppath, O_RDWR | O_CREAT | O_EXCL,
+						   S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);
+	if (fd < 0)
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not create file \"%s\": %m", tmppath)));
+
+	errno = 0;
+	if ((int) write(fd, content, size) != size)
+	{
+		int			save_errno = errno;
+
+		/*
+		 * If we fail to make the file, delete it to release disk space
+		 */
+		unlink(tmppath);
+		/* if write didn't set errno, assume problem is no disk space */
+		errno = save_errno ? save_errno : ENOSPC;
+
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not write to file \"%s\": %m", tmppath)));
+	}
+
+	if (pg_fsync(fd) != 0)
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not fsync file \"%s\": %m", tmppath)));
+
+	if (CloseTransientFile(fd))
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not close file \"%s\": %m", tmppath)));
+
+
+	/*
+	 * Now move the completed history file into place with its final name.
+	 */
+	TLHistoryFilePath(path, tli);
+
+	/*
+	 * Prefer link() to rename() here just to be really sure that we don't
+	 * overwrite an existing logfile.  However, there shouldn't be one, so
+	 * rename() is an acceptable substitute except for the truly paranoid.
+	 */
+#if HAVE_WORKING_LINK
+	if (link(tmppath, path) < 0)
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not link file \"%s\" to \"%s\": %m",
+						tmppath, path)));
+	unlink(tmppath);
+#else
+	if (rename(tmppath, path) < 0)
+		ereport(ERROR,
+				(errcode_for_file_access(),
+				 errmsg("could not rename file \"%s\" to \"%s\": %m",
+						tmppath, path)));
+#endif
+}
+
+/*
  * Returns true if 'expectedTLEs' contains a timeline with id 'tli'
  */
 bool