selects a size equal to
1/32nd (about 3%) of <xref linkend="guc-shared-buffers"/>, but not less
than <literal>64kB</literal> nor more than the size of one WAL
segment, typically <literal>16MB</literal>. This value can be set
manually if the automatic choice is too large or too small,
but any positive value less than <literal>32kB</literal> will be
treated as <literal>32kB</literal>.
If this value is specified without units, it is taken as WAL blocks,
that is <symbol>XLOG_BLCKSZ</symbol> bytes, typically 8kB.
This parameter can only be set at server start.
</para>
<para>
The contents of the WAL buffers are written out to disk at every
transaction commit, so extremely large values are unlikely to
provide a significant benefit. However, setting this value to at
least a few megabytes can improve write performance on a busy
server where many clients are committing at once. The auto-tuning
selected by the default setting of -1 should give reasonable
results in most cases.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry id="guc-wal-writer-delay" xreflabel="wal_writer_delay">
<term><varname>wal_writer_delay</varname> (<type>integer</type>)
<indexterm>
<primary><varname>wal_writer_delay</varname> configuration parameter</primary>
</indexterm>
</term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specifies how often the WAL writer flushes WAL, in time terms.
After flushing WAL the writer sleeps for the length of time given
by <varname>wal_writer_delay</varname>, unless woken up sooner
by an asynchronously committing transaction. If the last flush
happened less than <varname>wal_writer_delay</varname> ago and less
than <varname>wal_writer_flush_after</varname> worth of WAL has been
produced since, then WAL is only written to the operating system, not
flushed to disk.
If this value is specified without units, it is taken as milliseconds.
The default value is 200 milliseconds (<literal>200ms</literal>). Note that
on some systems, the effective resolution of sleep delays is 10
milliseconds; setting <varname>wal_writer_delay</varname> to a value that is
not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it to the
next higher multiple of 10. This parameter can only be set in the
<filename>postgresql.conf</filename> file or on the server command line.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry id="guc-wal-writer-flush-after" xreflabel="wal_writer_flush_after">
<term><varname>wal_writer_flush_after</varname> (<type>integer</type>)
<indexterm>
<primary><varname>wal_writer_flush_after</varname> configuration parameter</primary>
</indexterm>
</term>
<listitem>
<para>
Specifies how often the WAL writer flushes WAL, in volume terms.
If the last flush happened less
than <varname>wal_writer_delay</varname> ago and less
than <varname>wal_writer_flush_after</varname> worth of WAL has been
produced since, then WAL is only written to the operating system, not
flushed to disk. If <varname>wal_writer_flush_after</varname> is set
to <literal>0</literal> then WAL data is always flushed immediately.
If this value is specified without units, it is taken as WAL blocks,
that is <symbol>XLOG_BLCKSZ</symbol> bytes, typically 8kB.
The default is <literal>1MB</literal>.
This parameter can only be set in the
<filename>postgresql.conf</filename> file or on the server command line.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry id="guc-wal-skip-threshold" xreflabel="wal_skip_threshold">
<term><varname>wal_skip_threshold</varname> (<type>integer</type>)