On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 8:48 AM Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 10:41 AM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 8:31 AM Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 10:11 AM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Monday, December 18, 2023, Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:PG 14.10pg_ctl failed when I added a thirteenth parameter (log_temp_files). Is this documented, and I missed it?(The purpose is to optimize for a 30-thread pg_restore of a multi-TB 9.6 database. Once it's finished, I stop/start, to enable "production" values like fsync=on.)pg_ctl restart -wt999 -mfast
-o '-c fsync=off' \
-o '-c full_page_writes=off' \
-o '-c log_statement=none' \
-o '-c log_temp_files=100kB' \
-o '-c max_wal_size=36GB' \
-o '-c wal_level=minimal' \
-o '-c max_wal_senders=0' \
-o '-c wal_buffers=64MB' \
-o '-c log_checkpoints=off' \
-o '-c autovacuum=off'
pg_ctl: too many command-line arguments (first is "restart")Arguments are not parameters. Try putting the restart argument after all parameters.Quite irritating. "pg_ctl restart" instantly tells you what it's doing.And still, why the limitation?I'm thinking that the forced ordering being different than what is documented is a shell-specific issue. As for why only one of restart, stop, start, etc... can be specified for any given invocation of pg_ctl, that seems like an entirely realistic limitation and typo-preventing feature.The error message is "pg_ctl: too many command-line arguments". It's manifestly obvious that the command failed when I added a "-" option, not a "start", "stop" command. and yet pg_ctl complained about command-line arguments.
As soon as you supplied "restart" the CLI parser code for your shell/whatnot stopped looking for options/parameters and everything else subsequent is defined to be an argument. As soon as it sees a second argument for a command that is defined to only have a single argument the parser immediately aborts.
Yes, I'm describing what is observed. I don't know precisely which tooling is "at fault" here or who could make it behave differently but the concept of options first, everything after the last option/first argument is an argument is something that exists and is what you are seeing here.
David J.
