Re: (Never?) Kill Postmaster?

Hi,

First you need to identify the correct postgresql process. Postgresql
spawns an individual server process for each database connection. They
look something like this:

postgres 27296 7089 9 08:00 ? 00:05:52 postgres: username
databasename [local] idle

If a query was running then it would say 'SELECT' instead of 'idle'.

You can send a SIGINT (ie, -2) to that process to cancel a query, eg

kill -2 27296

In most systems SIGINT is the default for kill so you could just do kill
<pid>.

The tip is ''kill -9' the postmaster', which has two important
differences to the scenario I just described:

1) kill -9 means the OS kills the process without allowing it to clean
up after itself

2) The postmaster is the master postgresql backend process. If you want
to kill a single query you would not want to kill that.

Regards // Mike

________________________________

From: Stefan Schwarzer [mailto:stefan(dot)schwarzer(at)grid(dot)unep(dot)ch]
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 3:58 PM
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: (Never?) Kill Postmaster?

Hi there,

I read dozens of times the "TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster"...

Now, what am I supposed to do if I launched a query which takes ages,
and which I want to interrupt?

Thanks for any advice,

Stef

____________________________________________________________________

Stefan Schwarzer

Lean Back and Relax - Enjoy some Nature Photography:

http://photoblog.la-famille-schwarzer.de

Appetite for Global Data? UNEP GEO Data Portal:

http://geodata.grid.unep.ch

____________________________________________________________________