Re: kill 'zombies'

=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sime=F3_Reig?= <simeo(at)incofisa(dot)com> writes:
> Sometimes access dies and we have lot of 'zombies' connections in our
> server, is it possible to kill only this threads without restart database ?

If it shows as "zombie" in ps, then you can't kill it (because it's
already dead). kill will have absolutely zero effect.

This should not happen, though. The only way a Postgres child process
could stay as "zombie" for more than a few milliseconds is if the
postmaster is hung up and unable to notice the dead child process.
If the postmaster were hung, you'd have a lot worse problems than zombie
processes --- you'd not be able to make new connections at all. So I
think you aren't giving us the straight scoop. Are you sure that these
zombie processes are actually Postgres processes? Look to see what
their parent process is.

> PostgreSQL 7.1.3 under freeBSD

You could do worse than update to 7.2. It's *much* harder for a
misbehaving client to hang the postmaster than it was pre-7.2.
But I'm not convinced that you're describing a Postgres problem.

regards, tom lane