Re: autovacuum starvation

From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
To: Jim Nasby <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org>
Cc: Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: autovacuum starvation
Date: 2007-05-07 17:59:10
Message-ID: 20070507175910.GO3939@alvh.no-ip.org
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Jim Nasby wrote:
> On May 2, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >The recently discovered autovacuum bug made me notice something
> >that is
> >possibly critical. The current autovacuum code makes an effort not to
> >leave workers in a "starting" state for too long, lest there be
> >failure
> >to timely tend all databases needing vacuum.

> Isn't there some way to get the postmaster to signal the launcher?
> Perhaps stick an error code in shared memory and send it a signal?

We could have the postmaster signal the launcher, but the signal cannot
contain much useful info because the postmaster does generally not want
to write in shared memory.

Perhaps we could have the postmaster send a SIGUSR2 signal, which would
mean "couldn't start the worker" without any other info. Anything else
the launcher needs can be deduced from shmem state anyway.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

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