Re: [HACKERS] Problem after removal of exec(), help

Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> Since the removal of exec(), Thomas has seen, and I have confirmed that
> if a backend crashes, and the postmaster must reset the shared memory,
> no backends can connect anymore. One way to reproduce it is to run the
> regression tests, which on their last test will crash for an un-related
> reason. However, it will not allow you to restart any more backends.
>
> The error it gets is:
>
> Failed Assertion("!((((unsigned long)nextElem) > ShmemBase)):", File: "shmqueue.
> c", Line: 83)
> !((((unsigned long)nextElem) > ShmemBase)) (0) [No such file or directory]
>
> In this case nextElem = ShmemBase, so it is not greater. Removing the
> Assert() still does not make things work, so there must be something
> else.
>
> Now, the problem is probably not at that exact spot, but somewhere
> deeper. There are two differences between the old non-exec() behavior
> and new behavior. In the old setup, the backend had all its global
> variables initialized, while in the new no-exec case, they take the
> global variable values from the postmaster. Second, the old setup had
> each backend attaching to the shared memory, while the new setup has
> them inheriting the shared memory from the fork().

Bruce,
I have not look into it the specifics yet,
but I suggest looking into what is done when
the child process exits.
This (the pg_exit() et al.) caused some bugs
when we introduced unix domain sockets and
it is not the first place one looks. :-(

regards,
--
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Göran Thyni, sysadm, JMS Bildbasen, Kiruna