> > So it looks like the STOPPING of the service actually > > succeeded, albeit > > it took a while (more than the usual sessions open?). The > > STARTING is > > the one that actually failed (is that because the STOP was still in > > process?). The question is why -- in a RESTART situation > > wouldn't/shouldn't the START part wait for the STOP part to complete > > (regardless of how long it takes)? > > Well, this'd depend on the details of the postgres init script you're > using, which you gave no hint about (and yes, there are a *ton* of > different versions out there). The one I'm currently shipping for Red > Hat would give up waiting after a minute, but it should report failure > not success in that case. oh, sorry, i did not realize there were many of them. this is the 8.1.8 redhat one; the (hopefully) identifying lines are: 64 # Version 8.1 Devrim Gunduz <devrim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 65 # Increased sleep time from 1 sec to 2 sec. 66 67 # PGVERSION is the full package version, e.g., 8.1.1 68 # Note: the specfile ordinarily updates this during install 69 PGVERSION=8.1.8 i have examined the stop() and start() and i think i understand why the stop() reported a failure (it took to long), but i don't understand how the start() could have reported success: > Stopping postgresql service: [FAILED] > Starting postgresql service: [ OK ] there was definitely no running DB after that (until someone manually started it hours later). > > We have a nightly restart of one PG database. > > Just out of curiosity, what for? I can't imagine any really > good reason > for just shutting down the postmaster and immediately restarting it. why have a "restart" option if there is never a reason for it? :-) seriously, this is a good question, i think this was someone's idea of a quick way to clear any remaining DB sessions in order to be able to drop a database and restore a newer version (this is a reporting DB that gets refreshed nightly with a dump from another DB). this seems a bit misguided in that if you want to kill sessions you should just kill sessions, (a la http://varlena.com/GeneralBits/29.html), right? what's your opinion on the best way to do this? thanks. george
