hi tom, so maybe i'm using the word crash too liberally. this is the error message i get: server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: WARNING: terminating connection because of crash of another server process 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. HINT: In a moment you should be able to reconnect to the database and repeat your command. Failed. !> !> a ps auwx | grep sql shows that postgres is running though, so maybe not a complete crash? version is 8.2.0, just downloaded a few days ago. the max_stack_depth is 2MB. matt On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 08:41:28PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote: > m.c.wilkins@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes: > > i would like to allow updates to a view, but pgsql crashes, > > presummably from an infinite loop. > > If it crashes, that's a bug, regardless of whether the code is doing > what you want. However, if the thing is indeed into an infinite > recursion, you might be running out of stack space, in which case the > bug is an incorrect setting of max_stack_depth. (PG 8.2 should be able > to set max_stack_depth for itself on most platforms, but older releases > rely on you to get it right.) If you reduce max_stack_depth, do you get > an error message instead of a crash? What are the exact crash symptoms, > anyway? And which PG version is this? > > regards, tom lane