Current problem of Patroni that strikes many people is that it removes replication slot for member which key is expired from DCS. As a result, when the replica comes back from a scheduled maintenance WAL segments could be already absent, and it can't continue streaming without pulling files from archive.
With PostgreSQL 16 and newer we get another problem: logical slot on a standby node could be invalidated if physical replication slot on the primary was removed (and `pg_catalog` vacuumed).
The most problematic environment is Kubernetes, where slot is removed nearly instantly when member Pod is deleted.
So far, one of the recommended solutions was to configure permanent physical slots with names that match member names to avoid removal of replication slots. It works, but depending on environment might be non-trivial to implement (when for example members may change their names).
This PR implements support of `member_slots_ttl` global configuration parameter, that controls for how long member replication slots should be kept when the member key is absent. Default value is set to `30min`.
The feature is supported only starting from PostgreSQL 11 and newer, because we want to retain slots not only on the leader node, but on all nodes that could potentially become the new leader, and they should be moved forward using `pg_replication_slot_advance()` function.
One could disable feature and get back to the old behavior by setting `member_slots_ttl` to `0`.
- Fixed issues with has_permanent_slots() method. It didn't took into account the case of permanent physical slots for members, falsely concluding that there are no permanent slots.
- Write to the status key only LSNs for permanent slots (not just for slots that exist on the primary).
- Include pg_current_wal_flush_lsn() to slots feedback, so that slots on standby nodes could be advanced
- Improved behave tests:
- Verify that permanent slots are properly created on standby nodes
- Verify that permanent slots are properly advanced, including DCS failsafe mode
- Verify that only permanent slots are written to the `/status`
Create permanent physical replication slots on standby nodes and use `pg_replication_slot_advance()` function to move them forward.
The `restart_lsn` is advanced based on values stored in the `/status` key by the primary node.
When slot is created on a replica it could be ahead the same slot on the primary and therefore there is some period of time when it doesn't protect WAL files from being recycled.
