The reference to 'atacontrol' on FreeBSD is outdated.

On 8/8/17 18:40, jrekins@gmail.com wrote:

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/wal-reliability.html
Description:

Hi,

On this page:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/wal-reliability.html

... there is a reference to 'atacontrol' on FreeBSD: 'On FreeBSD, IDE drives
can be queried using atacontrol...'

This command was deprecated in FreeBSD 9.0 which was released in January
2012. Here is a link to the relevant man page highlighting its obsolesence:
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=atacontrol&sektion=8&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE

The 'camcontrol' is the replacement.

Could you supply a new phrasing of that paragraph? Does camcontrol now
handle both IDE and SCSI?

--
Peter Eisentraut http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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Hi,

Sure. Camcontrol does indeed cover IDE, SCSI and SAS drives.

Replace this line:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using atacontrol...

With this:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using camcontrol identify...

In other words, the query is the same as for SCSI drives. For verification this is what the output looks like:

root@bsd11desk:/home/jre # camcontrol identify 0:0:0 | egrep "Feature|write cache"
Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor
write cache yes yes

I appreciate the Postgresql docs are not meant to be FreeBSD tutorials.

Thanks,
J.

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 10:47:00PM +0100, John Ekins wrote:

Hi,

Sure. Camcontrol does indeed cover IDE, SCSI and SAS drives.

Replace this line:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using atacontrol...

With this:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using camcontrol identify...

In other words, the query is the same as for SCSI drives. For verification this
is what the output looks like:

root@bsd11desk:/home/jre # camcontrol identify 0:0:0 | egrep "Feature|write
cache"
Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor
write cache yes yes

I appreciate the Postgresql docs are not meant to be FreeBSD tutorials.

I know this email is six years old, but I have applied this fix to all
supported Postgres versions. A huge apology for this delay.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Only you can decide what is important to you.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 2:12 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 10:47:00PM +0100, John Ekins wrote:

Sure. Camcontrol does indeed cover IDE, SCSI and SAS drives.

Replace this line:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using atacontrol...

With this:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using camcontrol identify...

In other words, the query is the same as for SCSI drives. For verification this
is what the output looks like:

root@bsd11desk:/home/jre # camcontrol identify 0:0:0 | egrep "Feature|write
cache"
Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor
write cache yes yes

I appreciate the Postgresql docs are not meant to be FreeBSD tutorials.

I know this email is six years old, but I have applied this fix to all
supported Postgres versions. A huge apology for this delay.

It's funny that we discuss IDE drives at all. They stopped being
manufactured a decade ago and are not supported by modern chipsets or
boards etc[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Primacy_and_obsolescence. I've been meaning to do something about that, but I
didn't have enough round tuits to research what to write about current
storage technologies... but also in the case of FreeBSD, it doesn't
let you turn the write cache on and off with nvmecontrol yet, but
someone has a relevant patch out (D32700) so I was also waiting for
that to go somewhere before writing in...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Primacy_and_obsolescence

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 03:25:07PM +1300, Thomas Munro wrote:

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 2:12 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 10:47:00PM +0100, John Ekins wrote:

Sure. Camcontrol does indeed cover IDE, SCSI and SAS drives.

Replace this line:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using atacontrol...

With this:
On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using camcontrol identify...

In other words, the query is the same as for SCSI drives. For verification this
is what the output looks like:

root@bsd11desk:/home/jre # camcontrol identify 0:0:0 | egrep "Feature|write
cache"
Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor
write cache yes yes

I appreciate the Postgresql docs are not meant to be FreeBSD tutorials.

I know this email is six years old, but I have applied this fix to all
supported Postgres versions. A huge apology for this delay.

It's funny that we discuss IDE drives at all. They stopped being
manufactured a decade ago and are not supported by modern chipsets or
boards etc[1]. I've been meaning to do something about that, but I
didn't have enough round tuits to research what to write about current
storage technologies... but also in the case of FreeBSD, it doesn't
let you turn the write cache on and off with nvmecontrol yet, but
someone has a relevant patch out (D32700) so I was also waiting for
that to go somewhere before writing in...

I don't think it is safe to disable the nvme cache since it is a cache
and a staging area. If you turn it off, it will burn out the chips over
time.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Only you can decide what is important to you.