Re: forced to restart postgresql service yesterday

> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] forced to restart postgresql service yesterday
>
> "Merlin Moncure" <merlin(dot)moncure(at)rcsonline(dot)com> writes:
> > The login was hanging in a simple plpgsql login script which
basically
> > did an insert/update on a small table. It would hang when called
from
> > within psql, and once hung the query would not respond to cancel
> > requests (such as they are implemented on win32). Investigating
> > further, trying to select form this small table at all would also
hang.
> > Unfortunately, this table tells me which pids are safe to kill and
which
> > are not,
>
> Did you look at pg_locks or pg_stat_activity?
>
> There is pretty much nothing we can do with this report given the lack
> of detail.
>
understood, I was in a big hurry to get the server back up.

pg_stat_activity worked ok...there were a lot of hung processes and it's
possible pg was over connection limit although pretty much everything
logs in as super user. There was also a ton of stuff in pg_locks but it
was hard to determine anything useful because my app makes a lot of use
of userlocks and I don't get the benefit of the revamped 8.1 pg_locks
view.

In any case, while waiting on a lock win32 pg will respond to query
cancel, and the server wouldn't while trying to do anything with this
particular table. It was like a process sucking black hole. Also, cpu
load was 0 as was disk.

Merlin