Re: how to terminate a process when kill fails

Mike Mascari <mascarm(at)mascari(dot)com> writes:
> This scenario was fixed a long time ago (7.1?). The whole 'Don't kill
> -9 the postmaster' comment was actually a tongue-in-cheek remark
> by me regarding a parallel discussion of RedHat init scripts.
> The corruption possibility has long-since been fixed. Since I've
> seen FUD claiming PostgreSQL doesn't have sufficient
> crash-recovery because of the tip, I suggest the tip be changed to:
> 'Feel free to kill -9 the postmaster'

Yes, that TIP is very long obsolete. However, kill -9 is still not
the *preferred* way to shut down the postmaster ;-). You don't get
a checkpoint, and in some cases the shared memory block may not get
recycled when you try to restart the postmaster, leading to serious
memory wastage.

I'd suggest we just remove that TIP from the set of possible messages...

regards, tom lane