Allow logical decoding on standbys

Unsurprisingly, this requires wal_level = logical to be set on the primary and
standby. The infrastructure added in 26669757b6a ensures that slots are
invalidated if the primary's wal_level is lowered.

Creating a slot on a standby waits for a xl_running_xact record to be
processed. If the primary is idle (and thus not emitting xl_running_xact
records), that can take a while.  To make that faster, this commit also
introduces the pg_log_standby_snapshot() function. By executing it on the
primary, completion of slot creation on the standby can be accelerated.

Note that logical decoding on a standby does not itself enforce that required
catalog rows are not removed. The user has to use physical replication slots +
hot_standby_feedback or other measures to prevent that. If catalog rows
required for a slot are removed, the slot is invalidated.

See 6af1793954e for an overall design of logical decoding on a standby.

Bumps catversion, for the addition of the pg_log_standby_snapshot() function.

Author: "Drouvot, Bertrand" <bertranddrouvot.pg@gmail.com>
Author: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> (in an older version)
Author: Amit Khandekar <amitdkhan.pg@gmail.com> (in an older version)
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-by: FabrÌzio de Royes Mello <fabriziomello@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 16 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/replication/logical/logical.c b/src/backend/replication/logical/logical.c
index 6ecea3c49c5..82dae950809 100644
--- a/src/backend/replication/logical/logical.c
+++ b/src/backend/replication/logical/logical.c
@@ -124,23 +124,21 @@ CheckLogicalDecodingRequirements(void)
 				(errcode(ERRCODE_OBJECT_NOT_IN_PREREQUISITE_STATE),
 				 errmsg("logical decoding requires a database connection")));
 
-	/* ----
-	 * TODO: We got to change that someday soon...
-	 *
-	 * There's basically three things missing to allow this:
-	 * 1) We need to be able to correctly and quickly identify the timeline a
-	 *	  LSN belongs to
-	 * 2) We need to force hot_standby_feedback to be enabled at all times so
-	 *	  the primary cannot remove rows we need.
-	 * 3) support dropping replication slots referring to a database, in
-	 *	  dbase_redo. There can't be any active ones due to HS recovery
-	 *	  conflicts, so that should be relatively easy.
-	 * ----
-	 */
 	if (RecoveryInProgress())
-		ereport(ERROR,
-				(errcode(ERRCODE_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED),
-				 errmsg("logical decoding cannot be used while in recovery")));
+	{
+		/*
+		 * This check may have race conditions, but whenever
+		 * XLOG_PARAMETER_CHANGE indicates that wal_level has changed, we
+		 * verify that there are no existing logical replication slots. And to
+		 * avoid races around creating a new slot,
+		 * CheckLogicalDecodingRequirements() is called once before creating
+		 * the slot, and once when logical decoding is initially starting up.
+		 */
+		if (GetActiveWalLevelOnStandby() < WAL_LEVEL_LOGICAL)
+			ereport(ERROR,
+					(errcode(ERRCODE_OBJECT_NOT_IN_PREREQUISITE_STATE),
+					 errmsg("logical decoding on a standby requires wal_level to be at least logical on the primary")));
+	}
 }
 
 /*
@@ -342,6 +340,12 @@ CreateInitDecodingContext(const char *plugin,
 	LogicalDecodingContext *ctx;
 	MemoryContext old_context;
 
+	/*
+	 * On a standby, this check is also required while creating the
+	 * slot. Check the comments in the function.
+	 */
+	CheckLogicalDecodingRequirements();
+
 	/* shorter lines... */
 	slot = MyReplicationSlot;