pool after that. However, on file systems with a block size larger
than
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname>'s, prefetching can avoid a
- costly read-before-write when a blocks are later written.
+ costly read-before-write when blocks are later written.
The default is off.
</para>
</listitem>
prefetching mechanism is most likely to be effective on systems
with <varname>full_page_writes</varname> set to
<varname>off</varname> (where that is safe), and where the working
- set is larger than RAM. By default, prefetching in recovery is enabled
- on operating systems that have <function>posix_fadvise</function>
- support.
+ set is larger than RAM. By default, prefetching in recovery is disabled.
</para>
</sect1>
* stall; this is counted with "skip_fpw".
*
* The only way we currently have to know that an I/O initiated with
- * PrefetchSharedBuffer() has that recovery will eventually call ReadBuffer(),
- * and perform a synchronous read. Therefore, we track the number of
+ * PrefetchSharedBuffer() has completed is to wait for the corresponding call
+ * to XLogReadBufferInRedo() to return. Therefore, we track the number of
* potentially in-flight I/Os by using a circular buffer of LSNs. When it's
- * full, we have to wait for recovery to replay records so that the queue
- * depth can be reduced, before we can do any more prefetching. Ideally, this
- * keeps us the right distance ahead to respect maintenance_io_concurrency.
+ * full, we have to wait for recovery to replay enough records to remove some
+ * LSNs, and only then can we initiate more prefetching. Ideally, this keeps
+ * us just the right distance ahead to respect maintenance_io_concurrency,
+ * though in practice it errs on the side of being too conservative because
+ * many I/Os complete sooner than we know.
*
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/
{
{"wal_decode_buffer_size", PGC_POSTMASTER, WAL_ARCHIVE_RECOVERY,
gettext_noop("Maximum buffer size for reading ahead in the WAL during recovery."),
- gettext_noop("This controls the maximum distance we can read ahead n the WAL to prefetch referenced blocks."),
+ gettext_noop("This controls the maximum distance we can read ahead in the WAL to prefetch referenced blocks."),
GUC_UNIT_BYTE
},
&wal_decode_buffer_size,