Hi all, A few days ago one of our postgres (8.3.12) servers was a bit unhappy, and someone decided to try a kill -9 on a backend process after a kill (TERM) was ineffective. I've read many times in the past that a kill -9 can be pretty hazardous to a postgres' health, and now it seems I get to see first hand how hazardous it really is :( Fortunately postgres seems to have detected the -9 signal and brought the system down: 2011-08-05 17:17:53 EST redacted.com 10.3.0.3(39556) admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx WARNING: terminating connection because of crash of another server process 2011-08-05 17:17:53 EST redacted.com 10.3.0.3(39556) admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx DETAIL: The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back the current transaction and exit, because another server process exited abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory. 2011-08-05 17:17:53 EST redacted.com 10.3.0.3(39556) admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx HINT: In a moment you should be able to reconnect to the database and repeat your command. After the barrage of those messages, there: 2011-08-05 17:17:54 EST LOG: all server processes terminated; reinitializing 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: database system was interrupted; last known up at 2011-08-05 17:15:33 EST 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: redo starts at 208/5013A758 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: record with zero length at 208/51497498 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: redo done at 208/51497468 2011-08-05 17:17:55 EST LOG: last completed transaction was at log time 2011-08-05 17:17:52.709539+10 2011-08-05 17:18:03 EST LOG: autovacuum launcher started 2011-08-05 17:18:03 EST LOG: database system is ready to accept connections For each of the other backend processes. I'm a bit worried about corruption and would like to know: - Is postgres 8.3.12 susceptible to corruption when a backend process is -9'd? - How do we confirm that there has been no corruption? We have nightly backups that dump every database in the cluster, and looking over postgres' logs I can't see any errors that might point to corruption... I guess that's a good sign - is there anything else I can look in to? Thanks very much, --Royce -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
