Re: it refuses to go down...

Hello Peter,

Thanks for your post. I appreciate your concern.

> I had to deal with this recently where the
> status was "notify interrupt"

Is this a response from "pg_ctl status" command?

At the moment, I see nothing alarming via ps:

$ ps ax | grep post
11807 ? Ss 0:00 sshd: postgres [priv]
11809 ? S 0:00 sshd: postgres(at)pts/5
12241 ? S 0:00 /pgsql/pgsql/bin/postgres
12243 ? Ss 2:33 postgres: writer process
12244 ? Ss 0:00 postgres: wal writer process
12245 ? Ss 0:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
12246 ? Ss 0:50 postgres: stats collector process
13814 ? SNl 426:30 java -Xms128m -Xmx4600m -jar gadb.jar -loadonly jdbc:db2://172.16.1.109:50001/sci2p mitch winkwink jdbc:postgresql://vixen/canon?prepareThreshold=1 gadb northpole 10
13828 ? Ss 234:43 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44824) idle in transaction
13830 ? Ss 235:51 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44826) idle in transaction
13832 ? Ss 0:16 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44828) idle in transaction
13833 ? Ss 235:03 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44829) idle in transaction
13835 ? Ss 234:54 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44831) idle
13837 ? Ss 235:48 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44833) idle
13839 ? Ss 235:12 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44835) idle
13841 ? Rs 234:32 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44837) SELECT
13843 ? Ss 234:03 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44839) idle in transaction
13845 ? Rs 234:20 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44841) SELECT
13847 ? Ss 235:29 postgres: gadb canon 127.0.0.1(44843) idle in transaction
14526 ? Ss 63:15 postgres: ysu canon 127.0.0.1(44853) idle
16563 ? Ss 2:06 postgres: autovacuum worker process canon
21201 pts/8 S+ 0:00 grep post

Regards,

Tena Sakai
tsakai(at)gallo(dot)ucsf(dot)edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Koczan [mailto:pjkoczan(at)gmail(dot)com]
Sent: Tue 3/25/2008 10:59 AM
To: Tena Sakai
Cc: Scott Marlowe; pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] it refuses to go down...

> > did you try pg_ctl -m immediate stop ???
>
> I just did, and it worked.
>
> $ pg_ctl stop -m immediate
> waiting for server to shut down.... done
> server stopped

I'd be careful about shutting down using "immediate" mode. It forces
the database into recovery mode.

Your problem could be that one or two connections are in a weird state
and even "fast" stopping can't kill them. Next time you have to
restart the server, you should check on the status of connections and
see if any are in a weird state. I had to deal with this recently
where the status was "notify interrupt" and I couldn't even stop fast.
I had to change some application code, but not much.

Just run "ps ax | grep post" (or whatever options you like to give ps
to show all processes) to filter out postgres processes. A connection
entry will look like like.

[pid] ? Ss 0:00 postgres: [user] [database] [client] [status]

Peter