Re: can't stop autovacuum by HUP'ing the server

Dave Cramer wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Dave Cramer <pg(at)fastcrypt(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Alvaro Herrera <
> > alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:

> >> Certainly not, and that's not what I see here either. I assume process
> >> 25407 is (was) the postmaster, yes?
> >>
> >> If you "show autovacuum", is it on?
> >
> > Yes that was the postmaster, and I did check to see if autovacuum was on,
> > and it was not.
> >
> So where do we go from here ?

The only possible explanation for this behavior is that somebody is
signalling the postmaster due to Xid wraparound issues. This is keyed
on some GUC vars -- Perhaps you have autovacuum_freeze_max_age set to an
insane value?

varsup.c line 246
/*
* We'll start trying to force autovacuums when oldest_datfrozenxid gets
* to be more than autovacuum_freeze_max_age transactions old.
*
* Note: guc.c ensures that autovacuum_freeze_max_age is in a sane range,
* so that xidVacLimit will be well before xidWarnLimit.
*
* [...]
*/
xidVacLimit = oldest_datfrozenxid + autovacuum_freeze_max_age;

...

if (TransactionIdFollowsOrEquals(curXid, xidVacLimit) &&
IsUnderPostmaster)
SendPostmasterSignal(PMSIGNAL_START_AUTOVAC_LAUNCHER);

However, I think that in allowed configurations you should also receive
these warnings:

/* Give an immediate warning if past the wrap warn point */
if (TransactionIdFollowsOrEquals(curXid, xidWarnLimit))
ereport(WARNING,
(errmsg("database \"%s\" must be vacuumed within %u transactions",
NameStr(*oldest_datname),
xidWrapLimit - curXid),
errhint("To avoid a database shutdown, execute a full-database VACUUM in \"%s\".",
NameStr(*oldest_datname))));

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.