Re: Postgres server crash

Craig A. James wrote:
> By the way, in spite of my questions and concerns, I was *very*
> impressed by the recovery process. I know it might seem like old hat to
> you guys to watch the WAL in action, and I know on a theoretical level
> it's supposed to work, but watching it recover 150 separate databases,
> and find and fix a couple of problems was very impressive. It gives me
> great confidence that I made the right choice to use Postgres.
>
> Richard Huxton wrote:
>>>> 2. Why didn't the database recover? Why are there two processes
>>>> that couldn't be killed?
>>
>> I'm guessing it didn't recover *because* there were two processes that
>> couldn't be killed. Responsibility for that falls to the
>> operating-system. I've seen it most often with faulty drivers or
>> hardware that's being communicated with/written to. However, see below.
>
> It can't be a coincidence that these were the only two processes in a
> SELECT operation. Does the server disable signals at critical points?

If a "kill -9" as root doesn't get rid of them, I think I'm right in
saying that it's a kernel-level problem rather than something else.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd