Re: Incomplete startup packet help needed

On Monday, January 23, 2012 5:00:17 pm David Johnston wrote:
> On Jan 23, 2012, at 19:38, Adrian Klaver <adrian(dot)klaver(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > On Monday, January 23, 2012 4:24:50 pm David Johnston wrote:
> >> Immediately upon starting the server I get an "incomplete startup
> >> packet" log message. Just prior there is an "autovacuum launcher
> >> started" message.
> >
> > Do you have other programs connecting to server on startup?
> >
> >> Any thoughts?
> >>
> >> David J.
>
> I have 3 external machines that hit this server plus Apache Tomcat on the
> same machine. I shutdown Tomcat during the restart. Possible a zombie
> (or hidden/forgotten) process is running though the log indicates local.
> Had been using pg_admin3 for testing and somehow ended up with a possible
> zombie process there so maybe...
>
> Version 9.0.x - can get the release a little later, running pg_dump at the
> moment.
>
> Still researching/learning but was using WAL shipping and the ship command
> was failing. In the target directory the most recent WAL files is only
> ~2MB in size (can't check the pg_xlog directory at the moment). My guess
> is size quota on target but cannot check at the moment. Turned off WAL
> archive and restarted the server. Restarted a couple of times until I
> remembered to shutdown all the other applications.
>
> Pg_dump seems to be running OK and was able to execute queries. Was still
> having difficulty getting my Tomcat software to connect but am unsure if
> I'm just missing something or what. No obvious messages in either log
> about that but cannot get back to it until the dump completes.
>
> Appreciate any help that can be given. Unfortunately I haven't focused
> enough attention on Linux (Ubuntu 10.4 LTE) and PostgreSQL administration
> as I'd like (education and/or professional services). Apparently that is
> going to change sooner than I had thought.

Alright alot going on. Searching for the error message tends to indicate what
others have said, there is something basically pinging the server with 'empty'
packets. Given everything you going on right now I would probably wait until the
server has attained a more quiescent state before tracking down the culprit. At
guess it not something that is server threatening, but worthy of attention. Once
the dump is complete and if it is possible, shut down the server. Go through and
make sure the programs hitting the server are shut down, for now at least that
probably should include the WAL archiving. Start the server up, tail -f the log
and then start up the client programs one at a time and see if any of them
tickle the error.

>
> David J.

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian(dot)klaver(at)gmail(dot)com