Re: Floating-point software assist fault?

"Ed L." <pgsql(at)bluepolka(dot)net> writes:
> We're seeing gobs of these via dmesg in PostgreSQL 8.3.3 on
> ia64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 3.4.6 20060404
> (Red Hat 3.4.6-8), kernel 2.6.9-55.EL:

> postmaster(13144): floating-point assist fault at ip
> 40000000003a9382, isr 0000040000000008

See if you can trace that instruction pointer address to any specific
part of the PG code (gdb will help, if the execute is built
--enable-debug).

PG isn't intentionally dealing in denormals, but I wonder if you've
found an edge case in, say, the code to manage spread-out checkpoints.
I believe that does do FP arithmetic, and it's in the bgwriter ...

regards, tom lane