Re: Lyris looking to help fix PostgresSQL crashing problems

John Buckman wrote:
> > John Buckman <john(at)lyris(dot)com> writes:
> > > It seems that with larger database sizes (500,000 rows and larger) and
> > > high stress, the server daemon has a tendency to core.
>
> > We'd love to see some stack traces ...
>
> Yeah, I just didn't know what form this list prefers to work on
> things, which is why I'd prefer to hire a regular participant
> of this list. If gcc 'where' stack traces are what you want,
> we can do that.

Yep, in most cases, the crash creates a core file in the database
directory. A backtrace of that core file is usually a good start. You
should to sure there are debugging symbols in the binary (gcc -g).

The server log files also often contain valuable information.

> I suspect that the problems may be platform-or-build related,
> because we've often had trouble replicating customer problems
> on our own systems. For example, we had many reports of problems
> with 7.2.x, and saw it crash often on a customer's redhat machine
> that we had ssh access to, but couldn't make it crash in our
> own lab. :( That's why we need help. If we could make a simple
> C test case that crashed pgsql, I'm sure you guys could fix the
> problem in a jiffy.

Yes, that does make it harder, but a backtrace usually gets us started.
It may also be tickling some OS bug or a hardware failure, or a simple
exhaustion of some resource.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073