pgbouncer in a netbox-branching environment

[tyler-8]

I use the connection-pooler pgbouncer in my NetBox environment and went to start using netbox-branching and have run into issues so wanted to share my findings/notes here in hopes that a solution can be found.

Upon launching NetBox with the plugin installed, this error is raised:

unsupported startup parameter in options: search_path

That had me searching around and I found this relevant issue/comment: #165 (comment)

and some other related discussions around the internet:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/53890386
• not support the startup parameter search_path pgbouncer/pgbouncer#89
• Consistent search_path between client and server pgbouncer/pgbouncer#73

Some of the "solutions" out there say you can add one of these options to your pgbouncer config:

track_extra_parameters = search_path
ignore_startup_parameters = search_path

and that does get things partially working. NetBox loads, and branches can be created. Creating a new branch in NetBox shows "Changes Ahead" counts/lists populated with data - but it's a brand new branch off of main so there shouldn't be any changes to speak of.

Removing pgbouncer from the equation and having NetBox connect directly to the database makes this issue go away. So clearly without search_path support today, netbox-branching appears to not do a real diff.

I attempted merging the branch anyway, just to see what happens, and it failed due to the Device matching query does not exist. - since in reality, that device had already been deleted in the past in main.

Abbreviated log output of attempted merge:

    "log": [
        "Merging branch Tinkering (branch_jhczvebb)",
        "Found 897 changes to merge",
        "Setting branch status to merging",
        "Applying change DCIM | interface TenGigabitEthernet1/1/3 deleted by netUser using default",
        "interface ID 332560 already deleted; skipping",
        "Applying change DCIM | interface TenGigabitEthernet1/1/7 deleted by netUser using default",
        "interface ID 332593 already deleted; skipping",
        "Applying change DCIM | interface FastEthernet1 deleted by netUser using default",
        "interface ID 332595 already deleted; skipping",
        "Applying change DCIM | interface TenGigabitEthernet1/1/14 deleted by netUser using default",
        "interface ID 332606 already deleted; skipping",
        "Applying change DCIM | device rtr1.office-a updated by netUser using default",
        "Device matching query does not exist."
    ]
}

[tyler-8]

There might be some options available or coming soon.

• Supposedly the citus extension for PostgreSQL supports track_extra_parameters = search_path today.
• A mention of some future patches to PostgreSQL itself that would allow the above behavior natively Make varcache (the pg parameters cached per connection) dynamically configurable. pgbouncer/pgbouncer#867 (comment) and Make GUC_REPORT configurable a bit, at the very least for search_path  pgbouncer/pg_pgbouncer#5 and https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAFh8B%3Dk8s7WrcqhafmYhdN1%2BE5LVzZi_QaYDq8bKvrGJTAhY2Q%40mail.gmail.com

[tyler-8]

A small update - so it does appear the 'fix' for allowing track_extra_parameters = search_path has been merged into the PostgreSQL codebase, but it has not yet been merged to any currently released versions as far as I can tell (17.2 is the latest as of this writing).