Re: What happens when you kill the postmaster?

2010/1/13 Ralf Schuchardt <rasc(at)gmx(dot)de>

> Hi,
>
> on one of our Mac servers an update (Remote Desktop Client) killed
> yesterday the postmaster process. Apparently this did not have any influence
> on existing connections and therefore was not detected until some time
> later, when no connection for a backup could be made.
>
> I have then closed all apps with connections to the database. This brought
> the whole cluster down. It restarted then with some transaction log rollback
> messages and seems to be running fine since then.
>
> Can I now expect that the database is in a consistent state, or must I
> assume the database is corrupted?
> I could run a dump-all without problems and there are rows created after
> the death the postmaster.
>
>
It depends on the signal which was sent to the postgres process.

AFAIK, only SIGKILL (unconditional kill) can make some damage to the
database.

see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/app-postgres.html forfull
explanation

> Thanks.
>
> Ralf Schuchardt
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--
Filip Rembiałkowski
JID,mailto:filip(dot)rembialkowski(at)gmail(dot)com
http://filip.rembialkowski.net/