repmgr and particularly repmgrd currently produce substantial
amounts of log output. Much of this is only useful when troubleshooting
or debugging.
Previously the -v/--verbose option just forced the log level to
INFO. With repmgrd this is pretty pointless - just set the log
level in the configuration file. With repmgr the configuration
file can be overriden by the new -L/--log-level option.
-v/--verbose now provides an additional, chattier/pedantic level
of logging ("Opening *this* logfile", "Executing *this* query",
"running in *this* loop") which is helpful for understanding
repmgr/repmgrd's behaviour, particularly for troubleshooting.
What additional verbose logging is generated will of course a
also depends on the log level set, so e.g. someone trying to
work out which configuration file is actually being opened
can use '--log-level=INFO --verbose' without being bothered
by an avalanche of extra verbose debugging output.
-t/--terse option will silence certain non-essential output, at
the moment any HINTs.
Note that -v/--verbose and -t/--terse are not mutually exclusive
(suggestions for better names welcome).
When cloning a server without this option, and pg_start_backup() takes time
to complete, repmgr appears to hang and give no indication of what may
or may not be happening. The hint provides an explanation for any
delay and possible action which could be taken to mitigate it.
There are a few places where additional hints are written as log
output, usually LOG_NOTICE. Create an explicit function to provide
hints in a standardized manner; by storing the log level of the
previous logger call, we can ensure the hint is only displayed when
the log message itself would be.
Part of an ongoing effort to better control repmgr's logging output.
Related to Github #127.
- use the previously introduced repmgr_atoi() function to parse
integers better
- collate all detected errors and output as a list, rather than
failing on the first error.
Also change "master" to "primary" in the comments for consistency
with main PostgreSQL terminology. We'll need to add aliases
for the configuration parameters at some point...
