From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
cc: Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>,
        Edwin Polkerman <edwin.polkerman@splendiddata.com>
Subject: Re: Do we want to avoid checksumming extra files in the datadir?
 [was: BUG #19647]
In-reply-to: <D36A4968-A56F-44C7-B4A4-1AC4CC936903@yesql.se>
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Comments: In-reply-to Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
	message dated "Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:20:52 +0200"
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Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:29:43 -0400
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Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:
> On 3 Sep 2026, at 19:10, Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com=
> wrote:
>> The inciting event is that an extension drops a file called
>> pgactive.stat into global/. We could say "don't do that", in which
>> case I think we should follow Robert's idea in [1] and complain about
>> the existence of the file itself rather than the lack of checksummable
>> material. Or we could say "that's fine" and adjust pg_checksums to
>> continue onwards if the filename isn't what we expect.

> I'm not sure I have a strong preference, keeping it in sync with pg_base=
backup
> seems like a pretty good strategy to make it easier for users.

It looks to me like there was a fair amount of consensus behind
025584a16, so I think we should conclude that pg_basebackup's new
behavior (ignore stray files) is the right thing and it was an
oversight that pg_checksums wasn't adjusted similarly.

			regards, tom lane