Re: Function to kill backend

Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> it would definitely need to be a lot more constrained than
> >> send-any-signal-to-any-postgres-process ... even for a superuser,
> >> that's a mighty fat-gauge foot-gun.
>
> > What sort of constraints do you have in mind?
>
> I'd limit it to SIGINT (query cancel) and SIGTERM (fast shutdown),
> and I'm not even real sure about SIGTERM. That facility is designed to
> work in the case of shutting down all backends together --- I'm not sure
> I want to promise that it behaves pleasantly to SIGTERM one backend and
> leave the rest going. Nor do I see a real good use-case for it.
>
> Also, no killing processes that aren't regular backends (eg, the
> bgwriter, the stats processes, and most especially the postmaster).
>
> Another point is that killing by PID is not necessarily what you want to
> do --- kill by transaction ID might be a better API, especially for
> query-cancel cases.

Seems like useful functionality. Right now, how does an administrator
kill another backend from psql? They can't.

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