Re: postmaster hangs

Rolf Staege <Rolf(dot)Staege(at)med(dot)uni-rostock(dot)de> writes:
> i'm using postgres version 7.4.1 and it run very stable until, may be,
> 4 weeks ago.
> now the postmaster hangs sometimes for a while (actually since 2 hours)
> and doesn't accept connections but comes back anytime. there is no
> possibility to stop the postmaster. even a kill -9 (it's only the
> developement system) doesn't work. i have to reboot the system to get
> the database running again.

Hardware problems? Most of the cases I've heard of where kill -9 didn't
work, it was because the process was partway through a disk operation
and the kernel was holding off the signal until the I/O completed
... but there was something broken about the disk and so the operation
never completed.

In any case, there is *no* way for an unprivileged process like Postgres
to resist kill -9, so your problem is certainly at either the hardware
or kernel level. I'd suggest talking to HP ...

regards, tom lane