Re: Postgres process

iliya g <gyozov2004@xxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 9 Aug 2011 07:24:13 -0700 (PDT)

Thanks, Raghavendra.
The problem is that when I run ps - ef l grep postgres, I only get postgres and not the process description. I can't see what kind of process it is and if it is a logger process or writer or stats collector. I get this at he end:

......./pgsql/bin/postgres

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                            Raghavendra <raghavendra.rao@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;                            

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                            iliya g <gyozov2004@xxxxxxxxx>;                                                     

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                            pgsql-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pgsql-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;                                                                             

                                Subject:

                            Re:  Postgres process                            

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                            Tue, Aug 9, 2011 11:05:29 AM                            

                                        Hi,

I need some help discovering the processes that run on an instance. I know that there are many processes running on one instance and they are all called postges, but I was hoping you can help me find a way to uniquely identify each one of them. I want to discover what the process name is and what the does. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

As you know, there are set of Mandatory process starts along with instance and others  'one-user-per-connection' basis called 'postgres' process (also called as 'Server Process' or 'User Process').

eg:- 
-bash-4.1$ ps -ef | grep postgres

postgres 19294     1  0 01:13 ?        00:00:04 /opt/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin/postgres -D data
postgres 19295 19294  0 01:13 ?        00:00:00 postgres: logger process

postgres 19297 19294  0 01:13 ?        00:00:00 postgres: writer process
postgres 19298 19294  0 01:13 ?        00:00:00 postgres: wal writer process
postgres 19299 19294  0 01:13 ?        00:00:01 postgres: autovacuum launcher process

postgres 19301 19294  0 01:13 ?        00:00:02 postgres: stats collector process
postgres 27176 19294  1 09:25 ?        00:00:01 postgres: postgres postgres [local] SELECT

In the above example, you can see both mandatory process and user-process performing 'SELECT' operation.
To identify postgres process uniquely, you can get it from catalog view 'pg_stat_activity'.

---
Regards,
Raghavendra
EnterpriseDB Corporation
Blog: http://raghavt.blogspot.com/

Thanks. 