Re: Kill a session

[Mark Kirkwood <markir(at)paradise(dot)net(dot)nz>]

Craig A. James wrote:
> I'm back to my original question: How do you kill a runaway query 
> without bringing down the whole database?  Is there really no answer to 
> this?

As others have mentioned, pg_cancel_backend(pid) will stop query 
execution by backend process id 'pid'.

While this is often enough, if you actually want to disconnect a backend 
process then there is nothing to let you do this remotely. I recently 
did a patch for Bizgres that just implements the 
pg_terminate_backend(pid) function (currently #ifdef'ed out of the 
codebase) as a contrib so it can be easily installed. See 
http://pgfoundry.org/pipermail/bizgres-general/2006-May/000484.html

If you want to try it out, please read the README (it discusses possible 
dangers associated with sending SIGTERM to backends). And I would 
certainly be interested in hearing what level of success (or otherwise) 
you have with it!

Best wishes

Mark