Re: Win32 hard crash problem

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> I already said that ;). The problem IS NOT that we can't restart the
>> system and get postgresql back. It is that it happens at all.

> It is quite different a bug that can only be fixed by "rebooting the
> server" (which to me means taking the operating system down and starting
> it afresh) than one that can be fixed by restarting the PostgreSQL
> server (_without_ taking the operating system down). I've been reading
> "reboot" all along -- sorry if I missed an email saying otherwise.

It sounds to me like we don't actually know that, because the client
doesn't know how to restart the postmaster without rebooting the OS.
(Josh says "pg_ctl stop" doesn't work in this state, which is a tad
interesting in itself, because that doesn't go through a connection
request.) It would be useful to try killing off the postgres processes
via task manager and then see if a new postmaster can be started and if
things then behave normally, or if a reboot is truly needed.

The bottom line here is that all we have so far are client-side
observations ("I get this message") and we have no clue what state
the postmaster thinks it's in. We really need more information.

regards, tom lane