[Pgpool-general] Disable automatic failover

[Tatsuo Ishii]

> Hello everyone.
> 
> We have a master/slave setup replicated by Slony. Pgpool version is 
> 3.1.1, PostgreSQL is 8.1.5.
> 
> We were recently bitten by automatic failover of pgpool, because the 
> slave server is read-only, for obvious reasons. The problem occured, 
> when pgpool for one reason or the other thought, that the master was 
> dead (which it was not, but that's besides the point). It started 
> sending all queries to slave, where all UPDATES and INSERTS failed.
> 
> We don't want that. We want the pgpool not to try to be smart and do 
> only what it is told. Is there a possibility to disable the automatic 
> failover?

Currently pgpool does not have such a function. It is cetainly doable
however.  I do not think it's a good idea to do so for the replication
mode, but for the master/slave mode, I tend to agree with you to
enable that function.

> Or at least, could pgpool somehow realize what mistake has it 
> made and switch back to master after few moments?

Again it seems reasonable to do so for master/slave mode.

For replicaton mode, it is dangeraous switching back without making
sure that the disconnected server is sync with the live one.
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan