Re: select on 22 GB table causes "An I/O error occured while sending to the backend." exception

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com>wrote:

> > wait a min here, postgres is supposed to be able to survive a complete
> box
> > failure without corrupting the database, if killing a process can corrupt
> > the database it sounds like a major problem.
>
> Yes it is a major problem, but not with postgresql. It's a major
> problem with the linux OOM killer killing processes that should not be
> killed.
>
> Would it be postgresql's fault if it corrupted data because my machine
> had bad memory? Or a bad hard drive? This is the same kind of
> failure. The postmaster should never be killed. It's the one thing
> holding it all together.
>

I fail to see the difference between the OOM killing it and the power going
out. And yes, if the power went out and PG came up with a corrupted DB
(assuming I didn't turn off fsync, etc) I *would* blame PG. I understand
that killing the postmaster could stop all useful PG work, that it could
cause it to stop responding to clients, that it could even "crash" PG, et
ceterabut if a particular process dying causes corrupted DBs, that sounds
borked to me.