Re: Fix doc: explanation of how postgres works when OOM killer is invoked

From: Takeshi Ideriha <iderihatakeshi(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Fujii Masao <masao(dot)fujii(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Manu <manuelreyesbravo(at)gmail(dot)com>, pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Fix doc: explanation of how postgres works when OOM killer is invoked
Date: 2026-10-15 08:27:06
Message-ID: 3d305f87-c109-4a4d-af52-f3779f799d62@gmail.com
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Hi

>On 2026/10/14 20:36, Fujii Masao wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2026 at 5:33 PM Takeshi Ideriha
> <iderihatakeshi(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> But I'd like to focus on correcting the wrong sentence for now.
>
> +1
>
> So, IMO, it's better to omit the OOM score description because it's not
> needed to correct the existing text and is already explained later in
> the same section.

On second thought, I agree with you. I'd like to keep the postgres doc
concise as possible. Fixed in v3 patch.

> + If a child process is terminated, all connections
> + will be terminated and <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> will
> + automatically restart when
> + <link linkend="guc-restart-after-crash"><varname>restart_after_crash</varname></link>
> + is on. If it is off, <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> will stop and
> + must be restarted manually.
>
> This description seems misleading because not all child process
> terminations have this effect. For example, terminating the syslogger
> does not terminate existing connections. But, to address this,
> listing all the exceptions here would be overkill, though. So, how about
> using "typically" instead, as follows?
>
> ---------------
> If a child process is terminated, PostgreSQL will typically terminate
> all remaining connections and either recover automatically, if
> restart_after_crash is enabled, or shut down. If PostgreSQL shuts
> down, it will need to be restarted to recover.
> ---------------
Oh, syslogger. It's true. Thank you for pointing this out and great
suggestion. Your suggestion looks much more correct and simple. I use
your wordings in v3 patch as is.

Regards,
Takeshi Ideriha

Attachment Content-Type Size
v3-0001-Fix-explain-how-postgres-behaves-when-an-OOM-kill.patch text/plain 1.5 KB

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