Re: spoonbill vs. -HEAD

On 03/26/2013 10:18 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>> There is some timeout code already in the buildfarm client. It was
>> originally put there to help us when we got CVS hangs, a not infrequent
>> occurrence in the early days, so it's currently only used if configured
>> for the checkout phase, but it could easily be used to create a build
>> timeout which would kill the whole process group if the timeout expired.
>> It wouldn't work on Windows, and of course it won't solve whatever
>> problem caused the hang in the first place, but it still might be worth
>> doing.
>
> +1 --- at least then we'd get reports of failures, rather than the
> current behavior where the animal just stops reporting.

yeah I have had multiple buildfarm members running into similiar issues
(like the still-unexplained issues on spoonbill from a year back:
http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/4FE4B674.3020500@kaltenbrunner.cc)
so I would really like to see an option for a global timeout.

Stefan