[PATCH] Fix minRecoveryPoint not advanced past checkpoint in CreateRestartPoint

On 01/04/2026 11:53, Adam Lee wrote:

Hi hackers,

I ran into this while working on recovery pre-check logic that relies on
pg_controldata to verify whether replay has reached a specific restore point.

Reproducer:

```
-- on primary:
CHECKPOINT;
SELECT pg_create_restore_point('test_rp');

-- recover with:
-- recovery_target_name = 'test_rp'
-- recovery_target_action = 'shutdown'

-- after recovery shuts down:
pg_controldata shows minRecoveryPoint 104 bytes behind
pg_create_restore_point's return value (104 bytes = one
RESTORE_POINT WAL record).
```

My RCA:

When recovery_target_action=shutdown triggers, the checkpointer performs a
shutdown restartpoint via CreateRestartPoint(). If a CHECKPOINT record was
replayed shortly before the recovery target, CreateRestartPoint advances
minRecoveryPoint to the end of that CHECKPOINT record.

However, any no-op records replayed after the CHECKPOINT (such as
RESTORE_POINT) do not dirty pages, so the lazy minRecoveryPoint update that
normally happens during page flushes never fires for them. As a result,
minRecoveryPoint in pg_control ends up behind the actual replay position.

Hmm, what exactly does minRecoveryPoint mean? The current behavior is
correct in the sense that if you restarted recovery, you could still
stop the recovery at the earlier LSN that's the minRecoveryPoint in the
control file, and the system would be consistent. I agree it feels
pretty weird though, it would seem natural to advance minRecoveryPoint
to the last replayed record on a restartpoint.

My Fix:

The attached patch fixes this by reading the current replay position from
shared memory after advancing minRecoveryPoint to the checkpoint end, and
advancing further if replay has progressed past it. This is safe because
CheckPointGuts() has already flushed all dirty buffers and the startup process
has exited, so replayEndRecPtr is stable and all pages are on disk.

We have this comment earlier in CreateRestartPoint():

* We don't explicitly advance minRecoveryPoint when we do create a
* restartpoint. It's assumed that flushing the buffers will do that as a
* side-effect.

That assumption is not quite right, then.

Perhaps we should simply call UpdateMinRecoveryPoint()? That would cause
the control file to be flushed twice though, so it's a little
inefficient, but maybe that's fine.

If we go with your patch, does it make this existing logic below obsolete?

if (ControlFile->state == DB_IN_ARCHIVE_RECOVERY)
{
if (ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint < lastCheckPointEndPtr)
{
ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint = lastCheckPointEndPtr;
ControlFile->minRecoveryPointTLI = lastCheckPoint.ThisTimeLineID;

/* update local copy */
LocalMinRecoveryPoint = ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint;
LocalMinRecoveryPointTLI = ControlFile->minRecoveryPointTLI;
}
if (flags & CHECKPOINT_IS_SHUTDOWN)
ControlFile->state = DB_SHUTDOWNED_IN_RECOVERY;
}

- Heikki

On Wed, Apr 01, 2026 at 12:38:15PM +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

My RCA:

When recovery_target_action=shutdown triggers, the checkpointer performs a
shutdown restartpoint via CreateRestartPoint(). If a CHECKPOINT record was
replayed shortly before the recovery target, CreateRestartPoint advances
minRecoveryPoint to the end of that CHECKPOINT record.

However, any no-op records replayed after the CHECKPOINT (such as
RESTORE_POINT) do not dirty pages, so the lazy minRecoveryPoint update that
normally happens during page flushes never fires for them. As a result,
minRecoveryPoint in pg_control ends up behind the actual replay position.

Hmm, what exactly does minRecoveryPoint mean? The current behavior is
correct in the sense that if you restarted recovery, you could still stop
the recovery at the earlier LSN that's the minRecoveryPoint in the control
file, and the system would be consistent. I agree it feels pretty weird
though, it would seem natural to advance minRecoveryPoint to the last
replayed record on a restartpoint.

Yes, the system is consistent either way. But for the shutdown action,
it would be natural to advance minRecoveryPoint to the last replayed
record, same as the pause and promote actions do, whose startup process
don't exit and have the chance calling UpdateMinRecoveryPoint().

Perhaps we should simply call UpdateMinRecoveryPoint()? That would cause the
control file to be flushed twice though, so it's a little inefficient, but
maybe that's fine.

And calling UpdateMinRecoveryPoint() still needs to explain why later
the codes need to ensure minRecoveryPoint is past the checkpoint record,
to me it doesn't make things simpler, but I'm OK either way.

If we go with your patch, does it make this existing logic below obsolete?

if (ControlFile->state == DB_IN_ARCHIVE_RECOVERY)
{
if (ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint < lastCheckPointEndPtr)
{
ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint = lastCheckPointEndPtr;
ControlFile->minRecoveryPointTLI = lastCheckPoint.ThisTimeLineID;

/* update local copy */
LocalMinRecoveryPoint = ControlFile->minRecoveryPoint;
LocalMinRecoveryPointTLI = ControlFile->minRecoveryPointTLI;
}
if (flags & CHECKPOINT_IS_SHUTDOWN)
ControlFile->state = DB_SHUTDOWNED_IN_RECOVERY;
}

Indeed, no need to check lastCheckPointEndPtr, replayEndRecPtr is always >= lastCheckPointEndPtr

--
Adam

PATCH v2 removed the variable lastCheckPointEndPtr and refined the comments.

Thanks for reviewing.

--
Adam

On Fri, Apr 03, 2026 at 01:10:08PM +0800, Adam Lee wrote:

PATCH v2 removed the variable lastCheckPointEndPtr and refined the comments.

Thanks for reviewing.

TBH, I am not convinced that this optimization in the control file is
worth it. minRecoveryPoint refers to a state where the on-disk pages
are all consistent based on their stored LSNs, see also the
cross-check that we do at the end of recovery in the event of
inconsistent pages. In most cases (say in the 99%-ish range), we will
have page flushes, making it non-relevant.

With time, I have also learnt the hard way that the less code paths
that update minRecoveryPoint in the control file, as well as the local
copies, the better. Simplifying this code is something we should try
to work on. Complicating it more has less value.

If we decide that this optimization is worth having, I am going to
request a TAP test to validate the behavior you'd expect out of it.
--
Michael

Thanks for reviewing!

On Wed, Apr 08, 2026 at 11:41:32AM +0900, Michael Paquier wrote:

TBH, I am not convinced that this optimization in the control file is
worth it. minRecoveryPoint refers to a state where the on-disk pages
are all consistent based on their stored LSNs, see also the
cross-check that we do at the end of recovery in the event of
inconsistent pages. In most cases (say in the 99%-ish range), we will
have page flushes, making it non-relevant.

I understand your point about minRecoveryPoint being primarily about on-disk
page consistency.

However, this value is also exposed via pg_controldata and used by external
tools - for example, pg_rewind reads it to determine where to start replaying
WAL. Third-party backup/recovery tools (like the project I'm working on) may
rely on it to verify that recovery has actually reached a specific restore
point. When the value is behind the actual replay position, these tools can
draw incorrect conclusions.

With time, I have also learnt the hard way that the less code paths
that update minRecoveryPoint in the control file, as well as the local
copies, the better. Simplifying this code is something we should try
to work on. Complicating it more has less value.

Agree. Note that this patch actually removes a code path rather than adding one
- the previous lastCheckPointEndPtr update is subsumed by the GetCurrentReplayRecPtr()
call, the complexity is roughly the same in terms of code paths and logic (I think).

If we decide that this optimization is worth having, I am going to
request a TAP test to validate the behavior you'd expect out of it.

PATCH v3 attached, which includes a TAP test covering multiple scenarios:
shutdown with and without a preceding CHECKPOINT, as well as promote and
pause actions for completeness. The test verifies that minRecoveryPoint
reaches at least the restore point LSN in each case.

--
Adam

Hi Adam, Michael,

I went through the discussion and wanted to share my thoughts.

I agree with Michael's point that semantically, minRecoveryPoint
represents the minimum LSN needed for on-disk page consistency, and
from that strict perspective, the current behavior is technically
correct. However, I also acknowledge Adam's concern about the
practical impact on tooling and automation that relies on
pg_controldata to accurately reflect recovery progress.

Given that the current behavior creates inconsistency across
recovery_target_action settings (pause and promote behave differently
than shutdown), external tools such as pg_rewind, backup solutions,
and monitoring systems depend on this value for operational decisions,
I support moving forward with this patch.

Regarding Michael's point about simplifying the minRecoveryPoint
update logic—I completely agree that reducing code paths and
complexity in this area would be valuable. If there are specific areas
that could benefit from simplification or refactoring, I would be
interested in helping with that work.

I haven't reviewed the patch in detail yet, but I will do so and share
any feedback or comments.

Best Regards,
Nitin Jadhav
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Microsoft

On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 06:08:36PM +0530, Nitin Jadhav wrote:

Given that the current behavior creates inconsistency across
recovery_target_action settings (pause and promote behave differently
than shutdown), external tools such as pg_rewind, backup solutions,
and monitoring systems depend on this value for operational decisions,
I support moving forward with this patch.

FWIW, I am still unconvinced even after a second read of the thread.
In basically all workloads (hand-waving a number but let's say 99%),
we are going to have page flushes anyway between a CHECKPOINT record
replayed and the recovery target, where each one is going to naturally
update the minRecoveryPoint. I'd still want less paths that update
minRecoveryPoint at the end of the day, not more of them.
--
Michael

I tend to agree with Michael on the meaning of minRecoveryPoint.

If a tool is using minRecoveryPoint to determine how far recovery has
progressed, then I would say it is looking at the wrong value. I also
do not quite understand what such a tool is trying to verify by
comparing minRecoveryPoint with the recovery target LSN.

If the goal is to verify that recovery reached the configured target,
PostgreSQL already performs that check itself and exits with a FATAL
error otherwise:

ereport(FATAL,
(errcode(ERRCODE_CONFIG_FILE_ERROR),
errmsg("recovery ended before configured recovery target was reached")));

If the underlying use case were explained in more detail, we could
probably have a more concrete discussion about how to address
it. However, I do not think changing the semantics of minRecoveryPoint
is the right solution based on the information available so far.

Regards.

--
Kyotaro Horiguchi
NTT Open Source Software Center

Hi Michael, Kyotaro,

Thanks for the clarifications and feedback.

I spent some time looking at how core tools like pg_rewind use this
value. After going through the code paths and the existing pg_rewind
tests, I understand the concern that minRecoveryPoint should primarily
be treated as a consistency-floor value. I also see that pg_rewind
currently depends on minRecoveryPoint in some standby-related
decisions, but I agree that this does not necessarily mean it should
be treated as a general indicator of how far recovery has progressed.

Given that, I’m okay to treat the current behavior as expected for now
and avoid pushing further on this until we have Adam’s view on whether
he still wants to pursue the change with stronger justification and
tests, or whether he prefers to drop or rework it based on this
semantic direction.

Best Regards,
Nitin Jadhav
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Microsoft