fsync=off & shutdown => crash?

Benjamin Arai <me@benjaminarai.com> writes:

I was reading the docuementation for 8.3
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/wal-async-commit.html) and it
states "An immediate-mode shutdown is equivalent to a server crash, and
will therefore cause loss of any unflushed asynchronous commits.". Does
this mean that doing a "shutdown" (centos: /sbin/service postgresql
stop) will be considered a crash?

Not unless the initscript uses an immediate-mode shutdown signal,
which would be a fairly unfriendly thing for it to do.

regards, tom lane