Re: 60 GB of error log.

2010/5/19 Erwin Brandstetter <brandstetter(at)falter(dot)at>:
> Aloha!
>
> I encountered a serious problem involving pgAdmin3 1.10.3 today. But I am
> not entirely sure, what is to blame. Maybe one of you can make anything of
> it?
>
> I gave a application-developer access to one of our databases (postgres
> 8.4.3 on Debian Lenny) so we could discuss the design of a new application
> in light of the existing data. Naturally I suggested pgAdmin 1.10.3 for
> viewing data and structure.
> He downloaded and installed the Mac edition (German version) and connected
> via TCP/IP to standard port 5432, with "SSL require". He tried a couple of
> things, the last thing he did was to experiment with the "Graphical Query
> Builder". He mentioned that he stopped a few queries that took too long. I
> saw fitting error messages in the log. But nothing unusual. Then he
> carelessly left his notebook running over night, leaving pgAdmin open, or at
> least, that's what he swears is all he did.
>
> It appears, that by a glitch in the SSL-handshake a loop was triggered that
> led to millions of error messages in the database log. The day after I had
> to deal with 60 GB (!) of log. I am not sure about the role of pgAdmin, the
> GQB or the SSL protocol (including possible quirks of the server?) Fact is,
> it almost stalled our productive database server by eating up all available
> disk space. This is the most serious incident involving pgAdmin I have ever
> experienced, yet. (Yeah, I need a strategy to prevent that from happening in
> general, I have learned that lesson.)
>
> I attached a snippet of the log. Maybe it tells one of you guys anything?
> Locale is German, I added some English translations.

pgAdmin doesn't really handle any of the SSL stuff itself, except to
turn it on or off, so we may need to pass this upstream. I wonder
though, if you've been hit by a variant of this:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-02/msg00198.php

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company